never been on it, but...ever the psych-geek...

a psych brought it up, as a maybe drug, because the 'atypicals' carry their own set of advese effects. . perphenazine or loxapine. both are on the less horrendous end of the 1st generation drugs...i forget why, exactly. perphenazine is a phenothiazine, so its very closely related to thorazine. dosages are lower, because its mid-potency (thorazine= low; trilafon=mid ; haldol, stelazine= high). less sedation than thorazine, but more EPS...but not as much EPS as Haldol, Prolixin, etc.

seroquel is low potency, to put this into a more modern perspective. risperidone is high potency.

in the big study, where perphenazine was compared to several 'atypicals,' perphenazine came out almost as well as zyprexa. i read somewhere that the researchers excluded some groups from the perphenazine group, which may have boosted its overall performance, but...yeah. weight gain can happen with any and all tranquilizers, its just way out of control with many of the 'atypicals,' it seems.

what a psych nurse told me is that dosage is key, plus monitoring for TD. AIMS test, every 6 months would be ideal. other than that...its been generic for a long time, its still somewhat popular and widely available.