Polypharmacy in the treatment of subjects with intellectual disability.

People with intellectual disabilities often suffer from mental disorders or display challenging behavior. For both impairments, treatment with more than one psychopharmacological drug is common, although little is known about efficacy and side effects of polypharmacological treatment. The paper reviews studies on treatment of people with intellectual disability (ID) with more than one psychoactive drug. Many studies rely on poor evidence and are supplemented with data from our own research. Risks and benefits of different combinations containing neuroleptics are listed. Ethical considerations for the use of different drugs combined are discussed. The use of combinations of neuroleptics on people with ID should be carried out with great care, since side effects may be amplified in people with ID, depending on the combination.