Generic Fares Well In Big Psychiatry Study

In a surprising finding, a government study comparing schizophrenia treatments found that an older generic medicine was as effective as all but one of the newer and more-expensive brandname drugs widely used to treat the mental illness.

The $67 million federally funded study also exposed just how poorly current antipsychotic drugs really work: Nearly three-quarters of people treated stopped taking the medicine they had been given within 18 months, due to side effects or poor control of symptoms. The results, from the...