Studies on Psychotropic Medications Weight Gain: Therapeutic Challenges, Complementary Approaches and Psychopharmacological Therapies

Objective: The review critically assimilates evidence-based data on several aspects of psychotropicinduced
weight gain with a focus on therapeutic challenges and multidimensional integrative
management strategies along with psychopharmacological interventions. Electronic searches of three
databases (from 2000 to 2020) using Boolean operators and keywords retrieved thousands of peerreviewed
articles published in scientific journals. Based on exclusion and inclusion criteria 141
pertinent articles were retained for this review. Overweight in psychiatric patients on weight increasing
psychotropic medications is associated with a variety of adverse consequences and therapeutic
challenges. Both overweight and obesity need multimodal patient-centred approaches including
lifestyle changes, dietary modifications and medicinal herbs, cognitive behaviour therapy, motivational
psychotherapy and weight controlling pharmacological interventions. Symptom relief from the primary
psychiatric illness is a necessary condition for this strategy to work successfully. Although overweight
or obesity secondary to psychotropic medication poses a number of treatment challenges, an
integrative intervention that combines complementary therapies with modern medications appears to
work best. This review calls for comparative research to determine the most effective strategies to
globally combat weight gain in psychiatric populations.