How It Works: The Science
This field of study examines the effects of drugs on the mind and behavior.
What is Psychopharmacology?
These types of drugs, such as Chlorpromazine (Thorazine), provided a breakthrough for patients experiencing positive symptoms of schizophrenia like hallucinations.
What are antipsychotic drugs?
This is the most widely used biomedical treatment today.
What is Drug Therapy?
This therapy, once controversial, involves sending a brief electric current through the brain of an anesthetized patient to treat severe depression.
What is Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)?
This prehistoric practice involved drilling holes in the skull to "release evil spirits."
What is Trephination?
To determine if a drug is truly effective rather than just a psychological effect, researchers use this type of study where neither the staff nor the patients know who gets the real medication.
What is a double-blind study?
This simple salt is an effective mood stabilizer for those suffering from the highs and lows of Bipolar Disorder.
What is Lithium?
Antipsychotic drugs work by blocking the receptor sites for this specific neurotransmitter, which is linked to hallucinations.
What is Dopamine?
This newer, non-invasive procedure uses magnetic energy pulses to the brain’s surface to stimulate or dampen cortical activity.
What is Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS)?
This irreversible surgical procedure, popularized in the 1930s, involved cutting the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.
What is a Lobotomy?
This phenomenon refers to the healing power of belief - if you think a treatment will work, you may actually feel better.
What is the placebo effect?
Fluoxetine, commonly known by this brand name, was a breakthrough in treating depression by blocking the reabsorption of serotonin.
What is Prozac?
Unlike older antidepressants, SSRIs are designed to prevent the "reuptake" of this specific neurotransmitter in the synapse.
What is Serotonin?
Unlike ECT, this magnetic therapy (rTMS) does not result in these common side effects, such as seizures or memory loss.
What are Cognitive impairments? (Memory loss or seizures also accepted).
Egas Moniz developed the lobotomy to help uncontrollably emotional or violent patients, but it often left them in this permanent mental state.
What is a lethargic, immature, or uncreative state?
Many psychotropic drugs work by mimicking or blocking these chemical messengers in the brain.
What are neurotransmitters?
These types of drugs (e.g., Xanax or Ativan) work by depressing central nervous system activity to help with agitation and dread.
Answer: What are Antianxiety drugs?
One side effect of long-term use of older antipsychotics is this condition, characterized by involuntary facial muscle tremors.
What is Tardive Dyskinesia?
Brain stimulation is typically reserved for "treatment-resistant" cases of this specific psychological disorder.
What is Depression?
This is the general term for any surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior.
What is Psychosurgery?
Critics of drug therapy point out that many people recover on their own due to this statistical tendency for unusual emotions to return to their average state.
What is regression toward the mean?
These specific antidepressants, known by the acronym SSRIs, are now frequently used to treat not just depression, but also anxiety and OCD.
What are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors?
While drugs can treat symptoms, this is often recommended alongside biomedical treatment to help patients learn coping skills and change thought patterns.
What is Psychotherapy (or Talk Therapy)?
Deep-brain stimulation has been used to "calm" a specific brain area that is overactive in people with depression, located between the frontal lobes and the limbic system.
What is the "Sadness Center"? (Technically the subgenual cingulate).
Historically, many patients were institutionalized in "asylums" before the "discovery" of these in the 1950s allowed for deinstitutionalization.
What are Psychotropic/Antipsychotic drugs?