Green Tea Extract for Obesity of Psychiatric Patients

Obesity or metabolic syndrome is becoming a global epidemic and common health problem, leading to the increase of associated comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. This phenomenon is also a serious problem among psychiatric patients due to the increase use of second generation antipsychotics and mood stabilizers such as lithium or valproic acid. These metabolic abnormalities can be regarded as medical comorbidities, and have an impact not only on physical health and increased hospital length of stay, but also on a lower functional outcome, low self-esteem and poorer quality of life and non-compliance to antipsychotics. Green tea is one of the most popular beverages in the world and is believed to have beneficial effects in prevention and treatment of many diseases, such as cancer-prevention, adjunct to chemotherapy for malignancy, to reduce mental and physical stress and improve memory function, to increase bone mineral density, and to decrease body weight. Since weight gain is a common and undesirable side effect with psychiatric medications, the management of it becomes an important issue in clinical practice. In this clinical trial, we will use decaffeinated green tea extract to treat overweight patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study design.