Parkinson's syndrome, depression and imipramine. A preliminary report.
(1/83)
Patients with Parkinson's syndrome whose major symptoms are akinesis, rigidity, inertia, depression, irritability and failure of adaptation rather than tremor appear to benefit in a global way from therapy with imipramine. Patients without much over-all functional impairment do not show this improvement. The hypothesis is offered that motivation to move and ability to move are perhaps neurologically as well as psychologically related functions. (+info)
Effects of a single experience on subsequent reactions to drugs.
(2/83)
The activity of rats in an unfamiliar environment was studied in order to determine how far their reactions to an amphetamine-barbiturate mixture depended on whether or not they had been under the influence of this mixture while exposed to the same environment once before. The environment consisted of a Y-shaped runway, and the activity studied was the number of entries into the arms of the Y during a three-minute trial; the two trials took place three days apart. At the first trial the drug mixture practically doubled activity. At the second trial rats which had been under the influence of the drug mixture at the first trial were again made more active by the drug mixture, but the drug mixture did not increase the activity of rats which had received only saline at the first trial. These results showed that a single brief exposure to an unfamiliar environment can markedly affect subsequent reactions to drugs, and interactions of this kind may have to be taken into account when it is desired to use animals repeatedly in tests of the action of drugs on behaviour. The drug mixture also produced ataxia which was assessed quantitatively by measuring the variability of the "splay" of the rats' footprints; ataxia was unaffected by previous experience. (+info)
DRUGS ARE NOT ENOUGH: SOME PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY FOR GENERAL MEDICAL PRACTICE.
(3/83)
There is no necessary antagonism between the judicious use of drugs and a psychotherapeutic approach to patients in general medical practice. A table is presented with a simple pragmatic classification of types of drugs for altering emotional and mental states. Three general principles are given for the use of such drugs, illustrated by examples of the use and misuse of tranquillizers.Some differentiation is made between sedatives and tranquillizers and between different types of tranquillizers, particularly with reference to the need to consider depressive features in patients. Suggestions are made for the use of drugs for mild depressions and for depressions accompanying organic disease.One may have to take an "experimental" approach to new drugs to determine which to them are of value in relation to the particular emotional states of one's own patients. (+info)
TREATMENT OF PSYCHOSOMATIC DISORDERS.
(4/83)
Goals, potentialities and limitations of treatment of psychosomatic disorders are reviewed. Removal of a disturbing psychosomatic symptom may be all that can be accomplished. The bulk of patients suffering from psychosomatic disorders should be treated by physicians other than psychiatrists. Difficulties arise, owing to differences in approach, when treatment is carried out by a general physician as well as a psychiatrist. In appraising the prospects of treatment, the age on examination, intelligence, duration of illness, degree of insight, nature of illness, environmental stress and personality structure of the patients should be considered. Psychiatric measures which have been employed include: electroconvulsive therapy, psychotropic drugs, hypnosis, drug abreaction, group therapy, supportive psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis provides the best understanding of the psychodynamics of psychosomatic illness but is, for a variety of reasons, applicable only to a small number of patients. Alternations and removal of disturbing symptoms can be accomplished by the other therapeutic means. (+info)
FIXED-RATIO PUNISHMENT WITH CONTINUOUS REINFORCEMENT.
(5/83)
Rats were reinforced with water for every bar-press and concurrently punished for every 10th or 20th bar-press. Punishment produced an initial suppression of responding followed by recovery. A slight change in the method of delivering punishment eventually led to a high response rate just after punishment, a low response rate just before punishment, and frequent intermediate pauses. The results are interpreted as showing that punishment became a safe signal and that the high rate of responding it released came to act as a conditioned aversive stimulus. The effects of amphetamine were consistent with this interpretation. Alcohol had the paradoxical effect of increasing pauses and depressing the low rate before punishment. (+info)
SOME PHARMACOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF THIOPROPERAZINE AND THEIR MODIFICATION BY ANTI-PARKINSONIAN DRUGS.
(6/83)
The pharmacological properties of a phenothiazine derivative thioproperazine have been compared with those of chlorpromazine, and the modifications by some anti-Parkinsonian drugs of its actions on the central nervous system have been studied. Thioproperazine was less potent than chlorpromazine in lowering blood pressure and antagonizing adrenaline in the cat, in depressing respiratory rate in the rabbit, in producing hypothermia and analgesia and in reducing the minimum anaesthetic dose of hexobarbitone in mice, and in protecting rats from convulsions induced by tryptamine. It was roughly equipotent to chlorpromazine in reducing locomotor activity of mice. Thioproperazine was more potent than chlorpromazine in protecting grouped mice from the acute toxicity of dexamphetamine, in preventing the acute behavioural disturbances produced by dexamphetamine in the rat, in producing a state of experimental catatonia in the rat and in preventing the emetic action of apomorphine in the dog. Hyoscine, benztropine or promethazine greatly reduced the ability of thioproperazine to prevent behavioural changes due to dexamphetamine in the rat and also abolished symptoms of experimental catatonia produced by thioproperazine. In contrast, the antiapomorphine activity of thioproperazine in the dog was not reduced to any extent by hyoscine or benztropine. (+info)
SCIENCE, MYSTICISM AND PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY.
(7/83)
Historically, psychopharmaceutical agents have been used to produce a mystical state with the religious connotation of "a union with Divine Nature" or of "oneness with God." Such transcendental states are also known to occur in starvation, self-flagellation, Yoga and various psychoses.A common psychological origin is suggested for these states, in which there is a psychic regression to an early phase of development. This genetically is the phase wherein the infant is still united with the mother and has not yet established the boundaries between the "self" and the "not-self." In a subtler form, the desire to regress to this phase may be a universal yearning which affects the physician, the investigator and even the manufacturer of drugs. Accordingly, we have a profusion of tranquilizers, euphoriants and ataractics the prescription or the investigation of which may give vicarious pleasure and relief of tension to the physician and scientist by a process of identification with the person receiving the drug.Mankind's quest for psychic development is difficult and precarious, alternately marked by progression and regression. Excesses in the use of drugs are indicated as regressive in nature. (+info)
THE USE OF LYSERGIC ACID DIETHYLAMIDE (LSD) IN PSYCHOTHERAPY.
(8/83)
One hundred of 150 patients with non-psychotic functional psychiatric disorders were benefited by the use of LSD psychotherapy. The dosage of LSD employed was 25 to 2000 micrograms intramuscularly per session for from one to 10 sessions. On this regimen four patients became psychotic and required electroconvulsive therapy. None were permanently harmed.Indications for and contraindications to this form of treatment and a procedure involving a doctor and a nurse as co-therapists are discussed. In particular, LSD is considered to permit "perceptualization of the transference".LSD possibly extends the scope and value of the psychotherapeutic approach in such cases. (+info)