Has psychopharmacology got a future?

Old but still gold: Lithium in stabilizing the mood

Many, if not all, great discoveries in psychopharmacology resulted, as Donald Klein noted,[1] “from chance observations of unexpected clinical benefits or as inadvertent outcomes of blind pharmaceutical searches.” One of such discoveries, by Cade J[2] in the late 1940's, was the calming anti-manic effect of lithium. Cade first noticed a calming effect of lithium in guinea pigs. He decided to te...

The psychopharmacological era: notes toward a history.

Cultural and economic influences on the psychopharmacological era are reviewed, in an attempt to bring into focus what has been happening in psychopharmacology for the past thirty years. It is argued that the belief that clinical advances are made through the heroic achievements of disinterested scientists is a simplistic view that may militate against future significant discoveries. Such disco...

Multifunctional drugs: a novel concept for psychopharmacology.

Beginning this month and appearing periodically in future columns, "Trends in Psychopharmacology" will cover a new concept and hot topic in the field, namely, that of "multifunctional drugs." The concept is presented in overview here. Future installments will cover specific drugs in greater depth. Multifunctional drugs include those agents with more than one putative therapeutic mechanism of ac...

Psilocybin for anxiety and depression in cancer care? Lessons from the past and prospects for the future.

Psychopharmacology and people with learning disability

originally developed to treat not the mentally handicapped but the mentally ill; those, for example, with schizophrenia, paranoia and other specific conditions, but now the far wider use of these drugs has been challenged because there is evidence that they can produce serious side-effects in addition to the distress already suffered. Future changes in the use of antipsychotic drugs in the UK m...