Drugs for Mental Illness: Feeling/Organism

by Barbara Gordon, Marvin E. Lickey, Barbara Lickey, Marvin E. & Gordon

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0716714582
• ISBN13: 9780716714583
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: W.H. Freeman & Company
• Length: 349 Pages

Customer Reviews

Renaissance mentors troubadours of the ancient present.

"Drugs for Mental Illness," by psychology professors Marvin E. Lickey and Barbara Gordon is the pharmacopeia which stores the death knell to madness. I enjoyed their detailed precis on brain functioning, i.e., how a (presynaptic) axon terminal of one nerve cell joins with the (postsynaptic membrane) cell body or dendrite of another nerve cell through synapses, with the release of molecular chemical transmitters, like acetylcholine, dopamine, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and serotonin; whose concomitant mental processes are altered by the use of psychotropic drugs. For example, assuaging the delusions and hallucinations often found in the psychoses described below. Lickey and Gordon's premise running through their book is: "...mental illness and mental health result from distinct physiological states in the brain." They then delve into the symptomology of schizophrenia, through the bible of mental disorder classification, "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Third Edition, DSM-III" (predicting continual updating back in 1983, and today we have "DSM-V"). The authors discuss its causes and are in the middle on the heredity versus environment debate, citing the study of identical twins (who possess identical genes) wherein often one twin of the pair is healthy and the other is not. Later they take issue with the more environmental approaches of "radical" psychiatrists Ronald David Laing and Thomas Stephen Szasz who eschew their medical (psychophysiological) model of mental illness, saying schizophrenics become what they are as an adaptation to arduous living situations and not because of illness-causing anatomical lesions; so subsequently don't require medication. Laing and Szasz also go so far as to say "schizophrenia" does not really exist and is therefore merely a label for power tripping psychiatrists to exploit the weak. However, Lickey and Gordon point to epilepsy and migraines--illnesses not caused by lesions but affect the brain, and ask if Alzheimer's disease was a myth until its anatomical brain abnormalities were discovered. Further, they emphasize drugs which affect the body have alleviated mental suffering. The authors say drug therapy, specifically with phenothiazines, of which chlorpromazine--whose trade name is Thorazine, is the best known and most efficacious for dealing with schizophrenia. How these major tranquilizers or neuroleptics work is by blocking postsynaptic receptors for the transmitter dopamine, causing an inhibitory effect in the postsynaptic cell, received from the presynaptic cell. They also endorse psychotherapy when a patient learns new social skills after receiving the appropriate drug(s) to relieve his symptoms. The authors, Lickey and Gordon, also touch on the topic of bipolar disorder and depression and believe their etiology is both environmental and hereditary, with stress being an instigating factor in the former. Lithium Carbonate--which acts by decreasing