Psycho-Pharmacology: My One and Only?

         This week in AP Psychology, we began to discuss the many methods of dealing with psychological disorders. Now that we've actually learned what each disorder is all about, it's important to see how they're treated. While listing and explaining each type of therapy would be riveting for everyone, I decided to focus more on psycho-pharmacology. Like everything else, the therapy world contains a bio-psycho-social approach. To deal with the biological aspect, you would probably need some sort of medicine to counteract whatever has gone wrong physically. That is where psycho-pharmacology, using medicine or drugs to treat psychological disorders, comes in.

         There are four classes of drugs that one uses to treat different psychological disorders. For psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, there are anti-psychotic drugs. These drugs dampen your response to irrelevant stimuli by blocking or stimulating neurotransmitter receptor sites. For paranoid schizophrenia, you might take chloropromazine or thorazine, which block dopamine receptor sites so excess dopamine cannot be used and prevent positive stimuli, such as hallucinations. Along with every drug comes side effects, and anti-psychotic drugs are no exception. Side effects include: tremors, sluggishness, twitches, and tardive dyskinesia (involuntary movement of limbs).

         To act against anxiety, one would use anti-anxiety drugs, which depress central nervous system activity. These drugs include xanax, ativan, valium, and benzodiazapine. This drug can produce physical dependence, as you become dependent on the drug to stop the symptoms of constant nervous system arousal. Another class of drugs, antidepressants, can also counteract anxiety symptoms. They increase the availability of serotonin and norepinephrine. One such drug would be SSRI, the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, which acts as an agonist for serotonin. Others would be prozac, zoloft, and paxil. These drugs help with anxiety as well because they stop the arousal neurotransmitters from manifesting.

         The last class of drugs, mood stabilizers, do just that: they stabilize the mood. These drugs would be used for bipolar disorder to stop the up and down swinging of bipolar disorder. One such drug would be lithium.

         With using one method comes the argument that another should be used instead. For the therapies that don't focus on the biological aspects of disorders, psycho-pharmacology would not be used. But is it better to use drugs and medicine for medically-based disorders, or should a mixture be used? On huffingtonpost.com, Michael Tansey, a psychologist from Chicago advocates first for psychotherapy, then for both psychotherapy and psycho-pharmacology, then only psycho-pharmacology, then neither.

         When advocating for only psycho-pharmacology, Tansey describes a scenario with someone who has a biologically based disorder. He says that for someone like this, it is better to see a psycho-pharmacologist, who would regularly check up on how the medication is working, see how the side effects are impacting life, and then adjust if necessary. Were they to only receive a quick prescription from an internist without a follow-up, a disdain for psychotherapy and medication may grow.

Link to article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-j-tansey/psychotherapy-medication-_b_4981790.html