Just two decades ago antipsychotic drugs were a minor part of the overall pharmaceutical business. Today, according to The New York Times article from which this market size was taken, antipsychotics lead all other drug classes in term of revenue generated. One’s first thought upon reading this may be that we must be getting way more psychotic but it turns out that these strong drugs are now prescribed for a much broader range of ills.

The top-selling brand of this drug category is Seroquel, produced by AstraZeneca. Other leading brands include Abilify, Geoden, Leponex, Risperdal and Zyprexa. Some of these drug names may be familiar to you even though they are prescription drugs and even though you may never have used one. That has to do with direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC advertising) which was made legal in the United States in 1997. Since then, we have all become far more educated about brand name prescription drugs. Interestingly, only one other nation in the world (New Zealand) allows the direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2009
Market size: $14.6 billion
Source: The New York Times, October 3, 2010, page B1.