Can long-term use of antipsychotic medications “eat your brain”? This question is one of the most important concerns of many patients and their families in our psychiatric department. Some family members delay treatment because they fear the patient will become stupid on antipsychotics, while others stop taking antipsychotics after discharge for fear that they will damage their brains, resulting in a relapse. Is it true that long-term use of antipsychotic drugs can damage the brain? Everyone knows that “medicine is poisonous”, and of course, antipsychotic drugs are no exception. Let us first understand the common side effects of antipsychotic drugs, such as dry mouth, constipation, weight gain, excessive sedation, tachycardia, extrapyramidal adverse reactions, etc. Excessive sedation, which is characterized by drowsiness, fatigue, drowsiness, unresponsiveness, lack of concentration, and lack of attention to the surroundings, can affect the patient’s life and work in severe cases, but we also know that sleeping does not change the structure of brain tissue, that is, it does not break the brain. There are different forms of extrapyramidal adverse reactions, such as hypertonia, which is clinically manifested as muscle stiffness, appearing to have a dull facial expression, dull gaze, stiff neck and stiff limbs; if there is a motor inability we can see that the patient has reduced spontaneous activity, little postural change, walking plate and so on. All these often make people think that taking medicine “eat bad brain”, “affect the intelligence”. In fact, when these side effects occur, the symptoms can be quickly reduced or disappeared if the medication is promptly reduced, discontinued or added to the countermeasure. If the brain is really damaged by the medication, the above methods will not reduce or disappear the symptoms at all. In addition, mental retardation in psychiatric patients has many causes and is not entirely due to the side effects of medication. The repeated failure to heal the disease itself and the low level of original intelligence can affect the mental activity of patients. According to a large number of clinical practices and scientists at home and abroad, antipsychotic drugs do not damage the brain. On the contrary, if you stop taking psychiatric drugs for a long time for fear that they will damage your brain, it will lead to relapse, shorten the remission period, damage brain function, and increase functional disability, which will instead make your “brain bad”. Let’s take schizophrenia as an example. More than 75% of patients with first-episode schizophrenia are clinically cured, but the rate of recurrent or worsening episodes is high. The risk of relapse in first-episode schizophrenia with interruption of medication is five times higher than that of those with continuous medication. Therefore, systemic antipsychotic medication is a key factor in reducing relapse rates and deterioration rates. Another point is that the medication side effects described in the medication instructions are summarized from thousands of patients, and also from laboratory or toxicology experiments, and are not meant to occur in every patient, nor will they all manifest in one person, and if they do occur, they are often mild. There are now many newer drugs that are effective, have mild side effects, and are well tolerated by patients taking them for long periods of time. As long as the correct medication under the guidance of a doctor can effectively control the development of the disease, restore normal thinking function and social function, to be able to study and live normally, why talk about “eat bad brain”! In real life, there are many patients with mental illness who are taking antipsychotic drugs and are successful in their jobs, and some students have gone on to university and graduate school? Therefore, patients and their families do not need to worry a lot. Only by adhering to the medication can we hope to cure the disease completely. Long-term use of antipsychotic drugs will not “eat the brain”.