This website offers people information about medications used in the mental health setting to help people make informed decisions about medication. Anybody can use this public website. Use this site on your own or use it together with your family or someone you care for or your doctor, nurse or pharmacist.

We offer a group of frequently asked questions (available in the left hand menu of every page) to help you find this information. People who use mental health services have chosen these questions. They are not exhaustive or definitive but instead offered as a starting point to inform discussions and choices about medication. By creating this website, we have made a genuine attempt to inform, educate and support.

The information we provide is based on published data and you can read more about the information sources we have used.

Any queries about an individuals treatment should be directed to a mental health professional or NHS Direct.

The importance of choice and medications

Medication can be taken for a short length of time but it can also be a lifelong experience for many people. With this in mind the choice of medication for people takes on even greater importance. When asked to indicate their top three priorities for improving services over half of people who use mental health services included medicines with fewer adverse effects. More than a third said this was their top priority (Rethink, Our Point of View Survey).

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) have stated on several guidelines about the importance of Choice. The Schizophrenia Guidelines (December 2002) assert that "The choice of antipsychotic drug should be made jointly by the individual and the clinician responsible for treatment based on an informed discussion of the relative benefits of the drugs and their side-effect profiles. The individual's advocate or carer should be consulted where appropriate."

The NICE Amended Depression Guidelines (April 2007) state that "Patient preference and past experience of treatment, and particular patient characteristics should inform the choice of drug."

More about the development of this website

This website is provided for you by Choice and Medication (C&M). Read more about the the site authors.

The development of this website is the result of a multi-sector partnership project involving Norfolk and Waveney Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, the United Kingdom Psychiatric Pharmacy Group (UKPPG), the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE), the College of Mental Health Pharmacists (CMHP) and between 2007-8 by the Pharmaceutical Schizophrenia Initiative (PSI), an Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) affiliated group. We have also consulted with many bodies ... read more.

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Help us to improve our developing website

This website is a work in progress. We need your help to make it even better. We have built this website based on what people said are the most important things it should do, and how it should look and feel. Some people who use the website say it provides good information, is engaging and easy to use. Others have told us that there some features of the website that do not work in the way that they expected them to. But what do you think? Your views are important to us and there are a number of ways that you can have your say about this website and help us to make it better for everyone who uses it.