Entry for 30 March 2013:
I didn't think I'd live long enough to
see the psychopharmacology movement begin to run out of steam! While drug
companies defund research on new psychopharm drugs, others in the field
continue to search desperately for ways to save the paradigm, such as cutting corners in the drug development
process. What is bracing and unexpected here is the range of scientists
admitting that there are real problems with the field, including the fact that
no new classes of psychiatric drugs have been introduced in the past 30 years.
What they seem to be missing in all of this is the idea that
psychotherapy/counselling is a much more refined and differentiated
psychopharmacological agent for helping people change their brains by changing
their experiences and behavior. Let's hear it for neuroplasticity!
No New Meds | Humans | Science News
Web edition: February 7, 2013 Print edition: February 23, 2013; Vol.183 #4, (p. 26)With drug firms in retreat, the pipeline for new psychiatric medications dries up
Psychiatry seemed poised on the edge of a breakthrough. In early 2011, after decades of no radically new drugs, a fundamentally different schizophrenia treatment promised relief from the psychotic hallucinations and delusions plaguing people with the disease. The new compound, devised by chemists at Eli Lilly and Co., hit a ...
1 comment:
Actually, the article details the reasons for the failure of new drugs - primarily the incredible complexity of the brain, whose secrets have only recently begun to open up to study. It would be foolish to say pharmaceutical drugs have failed, period when the field is less than half as old as psychoanalysis.
Post a Comment