Biological Approaches to Treatment Flashcards
How many prescriptions are filled for drugs that affect mood, thought and behaviour each year?
over 200 million
What are the three major categories of prescribed psychopharmacologiclal drugs?
Anti–Anxiety Drugs
Antidepressant drugs
Antipsychotic drugs
What is the goal for anti anxiety drug design?
Decrease anxiety as much as possible without decreasing alertness or concentration
What is an example of an anti-anxiety drug?
How does it work?
Buspirone (BuSpar)
•Slow acting, has fewer fatiguing side effects and seems to have less potential for abuse
•Used for generalized anxiety and PTSD
•Slows down excitatory synaptic activity in the nervous system
•enhancing postsynaptic activity of GABA
What are the three main categories of Antidepressant drugs?
Tricyclics
Monoamine Oxidase inhibitors
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
How do Tricyclic antidepressant drugs work?
Prevent uptake of excitatory neurotransmitters (serotonin or NA) into presynaptic neurons (reduce negative feedback) allowing them to keep having an effect on post synaptic activity
How do MAO inhibitors antidepressant drugs work?
They inhibit the activity of MAO which breaks down neurotransmitters in the synapses
Although MAO inhibitors and Tricyclic both work to increase the activity of the excitatory neurotransmitters NA and 5HT which has more severe side effects?
MAO inhibitors have more severe side effects than the tricyclics
•Wine and Cheese effect (high BP)
What type of antidepressants are replacing the tricyclics? Why?
SSRI’s
•Milder side effects
•reduce depressive symptoms more rapidly
•Reduce anxiety symptoms
How do SSRI’s work?
Block the reuptake of serotonin into the presynaptic neuron
SSRIs allow serotonin to continue its stimulation of postsynaptic neurons
Why was there a decline in in house hospitalized schizophrenics and other severely disturbed people?
The induction of antipsychotic drugs
What is the primary effect of antipsychotic drugs?
Also called major tranquilizers
Decrease the actions of dopamin, the neurotransmitter whose overactivity is thought to be involved in schizophrenia
What do antipsychotic drugs have a major effect on?
What do antipsychotic drugs have little effects on?
Major: On positive effects like hallucinations and delusions
Little: On negative effects like withdrawal and apathy
How long do schizophrenics have to continue taking antipsychotic drugs after returning to the community?
Indefinitely
Tardive Dyskinesia
: an irreversible motor disorder that can occur as a side effect of certain antipsychotic drugs. Uncontrollable and grotesque movements of the face and tongue are especially prominent in this disorder. Flailing limbs also occur
Clozapine
An antipsychotic drug that reduces both positive and negative symptoms, and appears not to produce tardive dyskinesia. Unfortunately, it produces fatal blood disease in 1 to 2% of users
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)
a biomedical technique involving the application of electrical current to the brain that is used primarily to reduce severe depression
•Due to the thought that epilepsy and schizophrenia could not coexist which was proved false
•Can treat severe depression, especially in those are suicidal or do not respond to medication
How do therapists help increase safety of ECT?
- Sedate the patient
- Given a muscle relaxant
- A rubber object in mouth to prevent tongue biting or damaging teeth
- Shock given for less than 1 second
Psychosurgery
surgical procedures, such as lobotomy or cingulotomy, in which brain tissue involved in a behaviour disorder is removed or destroyed
Lobotomy
A psychosurgery of the 1930s and 40s: A ten minute operation performed by inserting an ice pick like instrument with sharp edges through the eye socket into the brain, then wiggling it back and forth to sever the targeted nerve tracts (cutting the nerve tract that connects the frontal lobes with subcortical areas of the brain involved in emotion.) results in the calming of psychotic and uncontrollably violent patients
Cingulotomy
Involves cutting a small fibre bundle near the corpus colosseum that connects the frontal lobes with the limbic system
Used to treat severely depressed and obsessive compulsive disorders
Was psychotherapy or drug treatment more effective in treating anxiety?
Both treatments were effective
BUT psychological treatment produced stronger reduction in fear and social phobia symptoms than did the drug treatment
What does the anxiety circuit consist of?
Amygdala, hippocampus and areas of the temporal cerebral cortex
