figure 15-1
The side effect advantage
Conventional antipsychotic drugs are much more likely than second-generation antipsychotic drugs to produce undesired extrapyramidal symptoms. (A) The dose-response curve for conventional drugs shows that, beginning with low doses of the drugs, extrapyramidal side effects emerge and keep intensifying right along with increases in the drug doses. (B) In contrast, the dose-response curve for second-generation antipsychotic drugs indicates that extrapyramidal side effects typically do not even appear until a patient is taking relatively high doses of the drugs.