Why are antipsychotic medications prescribed for depressed patients? This is often the case before even TCA or MAO-inhibitors are tried, which have better documented pharmacology and effects on the human body compared to newer antipsychotics. This is also done even before the doctor has ruled out any other conditions, e.g. wrong diagnosis or deficiencies in the body. There are a lot of serious side effects with antipsychotics such as diabetes, parkinsonism, akasthesia etc that antidepressants generally speaking don't have. Not to mention that antipsychotics generally don't have an indication for depression, so why should they be used before the "stronger" antidepressants (which do have an indication for depression) are used?

I'm also not completely sold on the idea that a partial agonist of dopamine receptors (e.g. aripiprazole, brexiprazole, ...) would be any better than typical antipsychotics. There are probably good reasons for the uneven distribution of dopaminergic transmission in the brain, and trying to modulate that is probably not a good idea. If this was the main-selling idea, then how come that nearly all antipsychotics are of similar efficacy, only with different side effect profiles (at least for schizophrenia, perhaps some antipsychotics might be more suitable for depression)? Also clozapine is considered the most effective one, yet it's not like aripiprazole.