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Antipsychotic drugs affect sleep regulation during treatment and following withdrawal. Available data are reviewed. Typical antipsychotics improve sleep efficiency and increase REM latency without changing the duration of sleep stages. Atypical antipsychotics exert varying effects on sleep due to differences in central receptor interactions. Open treatment with olanzapine reduced stage 1 sleep, and increased stage 2 sleep, delta sleep and REM density. Clozapine increased stage 2 sleep, reduced stage 1 sleep and lengthened REM latency. Improved sleep maintenance and an association between positive clinical results and prolonged stage 2 sleep were reported. Risperidone significantly improved subjective and objective sleep quality in young and elderly schizophrenics. Additionally, schizophrenics treated with risperidone appear to have significantly better night-time sleep quality and daytime functioning. Conclusion: Atypical antipsychotics have shown superior efficacy on sleep profile compared to conventional neuroleptics. Atypicals demonstrate beneficial effects on multiple aspects of sleep patterns, with most data being available for risperidone. The clinical utility of antipsychotics with favourable effects on sleep may extend to sleep-related problems in other patient groups, such as night-wandering in elderly patients with dementia.

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Objectives: to set differential personality profiles for subgroups of patients with panic disorder diagnoses through the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), and to test its ability to discriminate those patients with a personality disorder (PD). Method: 82 consecutive outpatients diagnosed of DSM-IV panic attacks with/without agoraphobia were administered DSM-IV structured interviews (SCID, SCID-II) and TCI. T-tests, partial correlations, and linear regression analyses were conducted.