The study by the Parkinson Study Group also illustrates the growing interface between neurology and psychiatry. In this case, drugs developed for the treatment of a psychiatric condition, schizophrenia, have an important role in treating psychosis in patients with neurologic disease. Conversely, the study of psychosis in patients with Parkinson's disease should contribute to our knowledge about the neurobiologic basis of delusions and hallucinations. As neuropsychiatric disorders are increasingly studied, an understanding of the neurobiology of human behavior and emotion may begin to emerge. Ultimately, it is the individual patient who benefits from the development of new treatments.
Drug development is expensive, labor intensive, and slow.
It is worthwhile, however, when it provides the clinician with a new option to relieve a patient's delusional fear that he or she is in danger of being kidnapped or killed, without reducing the patient to the bed-bound, trembling state characterized by severe parkinsonism. All rights reserved.