Antipsychotics is the term used to refer to a class of medications that have been around for a long time.  Many people worry when they hear this term, because these medications have been used for people with very serious mental health problems (and have been misused as well, in part because for a long time they were the only tool available).  However, these medications can help when a person's thoughts are out of control, whether that's "racing thoughts" as in bipolar manic symptoms; or delusional thinking such as paranoia; or severely disorganized thought as can occur in either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. 

Fortunately, now we have the "new generation" of antipsychotics (listed below with Zyprexa being one).  This new group does not cause some of the effects of the old ones, that often made people want to stop their medications.  The old ones often made people feel as if they were too "shut down", as if they couldn't think freely or even act freely (an "emotional straightjacket", you may have heard people say). 

In addition, there was a severe side effect called "tardive dyskinesia" (TD).  Tardive, like tardy, means this comes on late, usually after people have taken these medications for months and often years.  Dyskinesia, another Greek word, means a bad (dys-) motion (kinesia, like kinetic).  TD can cause people's tongue to move in their mouth when they're not trying to move it.  Or cause their lips to smack, also involuntarily.  Or more rarely, TD can cause motions of their shoulders, or neck or even their trunk or whole body.  And these effects can persist even when the antipsychotic that caused them has been stopped, although in many cases if it's stopped soon enough, these motions will go away.  

So, when it was found that the "new generation" of antipsychotics caused this TD problem at a much lower rate, so low that it took quite a while to decide whether they really cause TD at all, this was very exciting.  One of the oldest and worst problems of the antipsychotics had been dramatically reduced. 

Further, the new generation medications don't cause that "emotional straightjacket" feeling very often either (sometimes, but no where near what the old ones did).  Thus overall these medications are much better tolerated than the old generation of antipsychotics. 

And, finally, the new generation of medications can do more than the old ones.  Zyprexa is clearly a "mood stabilizer" like Depakote and lithium.  Risperidone has substantial antidepressant effects, particularly in low doses in older folks.  Seroquel has strong anti-anxiety effects in many people.  Geodon is too new to know just yet -- but at least it doesn't seem to cause weight gain like the others frequently do.