Medication and drugs are a main part of psychiatric treatment and psychiatry. They are known as psychotropics or psychotropic drugs and also psychiatric medication. These medications include antidepressants, antipsychotics, hypnotics, anxiolytics and mood stabilisers amongst others.
Psychiatric medication is commonly used for the treatment of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, eating disorders, alcohol and drug use as well as sleeping disorder, autism, epilepsy and other mental health conditions. This section covers some of these medications used in psychiatric treatment.
Antipsychotics
Antipsychotic is the name given to a class of drugs which are used to treat the symptoms of a psychotic illness. Although their most important use is in treating schizophrenia they are also used to treat the psychotic symptoms that may occur in a number of other conditions. These include: drug-induced psychoses; psychoses associated with mania or depression; the psychotic symptoms that occur in some medical conditions (such as Alzheimer's Disease and delirium); and the psychotic symptoms of schizo-affective and delusional disorders.
Antipsychotics may also be used for their sedating action in conditions that are associated with disturbed behavior, e.g. an acute anxiety attack or in panic disorder - where the patient is not, in fact, psychotic at all. In other words, they are not specifically 'anti-schizophrenic' drugs nor specifically 'anti-psychotic' drugs. To a degree they are effective in treating psychotic symptoms and other symptoms of disturbed behavior however caused.
Antidepressants
Antidepressants are broadly classified according to their mode of action on neuro -transmitters in the brain. Neuro-transmitters are natural chemical substances, manufactured by nerve-cells (neurons) within the brain. They carry electrical messages across gaps (synapses), which exist in abundance between neurons. These chemical transmitters may be over or underactive in mood disorders such as depression and mania.
There is also evidence which suggests that receptors - i.e. specialized proteins on nerve cell endings which are particularly sensitive to different transmitters - may become under or over sensitive to neuro-transmitters in these disorders - producing the same result as caused by too little or too much neurotransmitter.
Antidepressant drugs all appear to work by altering the amount of available transmitter up or down, or by altering the sensitivity of receptors either up or down - or by a combination of both mechanisms.
This is a much over-simplified description of the state of current research but is nevertheless an important starting preliminary concept to grasp.
Antidepressant drugs are usually classified depending on their mechanism of action: that is, how they are believed work. Some drugs seem to be limited in their actions to one neurotransmitter (selective anti-depressants) while others may influence two or more neuro-transmitters. The latter are sometimes called broad-spectrum anti-depressants.
The first discovered group of antidepressants, the tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), are considered broad-spectrum because they influence the activity of many different neurotransmitters. However, because of this wide-ranging activity they tend to have more side effects. Nevertheless they are powerful and generally reliable as antidepressants.
Antidepressants are broadly classified according to their mode of action on neuro -transmitters in the brain. Neuro-transmitters are natural chemical substances, manufactured by nerve-cells (neurons) within the brain. They carry electrical messages across gaps (synapses), which exist in abundance between neurons. These chemical transmitters may be over or underactive in mood disorders such as depression and mania.
There is also evidence which suggests that receptors - i.e. specialized proteins on nerve cell endings which are particularly sensitive to different transmitters - may become under or over sensitive to neuro-transmitters in these disorders - producing the same result as caused by too little or too much neurotransmitter.
Antidepressant drugs all appear to work by altering the amount of available transmitter up or down, or by altering the sensitivity of receptors either up or down - or by a combination of both mechanisms.
This is a much over-simplified description of the state of current research but is nevertheless an important starting preliminary concept to grasp.
Antidepressant drugs are usually classified depending on their mechanism of action: that is, how they are believed work. Some drugs seem to be limited in their actions to one neurotransmitter (selective anti-depressants) while others may influence two or more neuro-transmitters. The latter are sometimes called broad-spectrum anti-depressants.
The first discovered group of antidepressants, the tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), are considered broad-spectrum because they influence the activity of many different neurotransmitters. However, because of this wide-ranging activity they tend to have more side effects. Nevertheless they are powerful and generally reliable as antidepressants.
