Longevity & AgingShort-Term Antipsychotic Use Raises Diabetes Risk in Young People
A large Dutch cohort study found that antipsychotic medications raise the risk of type 2 diabetes in young people — even after just one year of use. Among nearly 90,000 youths, the relative risk of developing pharmacologically treated type 2 diabetes rose from near baseline at the start to more than three times higher by year five. Crucially, even those who only used antipsychotics in the first year still showed elevated diabetes risk afterward, suggesting the drugs trigger lasting metabolic changes. Antipsychotics are widely prescribed off-label to young people for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, and sleep disturbances — uses that experts say deserve much greater scrutiny given these findings.
