Psychopharmacology is the study of how drugs affect behavior

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American InterContinental University *

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N559

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Medicine

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Oct 30, 2023

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docx

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Uploaded by aaliyahgaines825

Psychopharmacology is the study of how drugs affect behavior. If a drug changes your perception, or the way you feel or think, the drug exerts effects on your brain and nervous system. We call drugs that change the way you think or feel psychoactive or psychotropic drugs, and almost everyone has used a psychoactive drug at some point (yes, caffeine counts). Understanding some of the basics about psychopharmacology can help us better understand a wide range of things that interest psychologists and others. For example, the pharmacological treatment of certain neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease tells us something about the disease itself. The pharmacological treatments used to treat psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia or depression have undergone amazing development since the 1950s, and the drugs used to treat these disorders tell us something about what is happening in the brain of individuals with these conditions. Finally, understanding something about the actions of drugs of abuse and their routes of administration can help us understand why some psychoactive drugs are so addictive. In this module, we will provide an overview of some of these topics as well as discuss some current controversial areas in the field of psychopharmacology. A psychopharmacologist is an expert advisor on which drug might have the best impact on a patient with a particular mental health condition. They understand how the medicine works and what the expected clinical outcomes are. The medic is also likely to have a grasp of neuroscience as the medicines used have impacts on the functioning of the central nervous system. Moreover,

they comprehend the differences between a wide range of mental health conditions. In order to prescribe drugs, the psychopharmacologist will need to have an in depth understanding of the drug’s pharmacokinetics (i.e., the movement of the drug within the body) and pharmacodynamics (i.e., the effects of the drug and its mechanism of action). This is particularly important should a medicine interact with any reward regions of the body as the psychopharmacologist would not, for example, want a medicine to interact too quickly and cause the patient to become addicted to a possible high that the medicine gives them. Therefore, the scientist needs to understand how the drug interacts with the body over time at a particular dose, how long it stays in the body and also if it is likely to react with any other medicines that the patient is taking. They should also have some knowledge of the genetics of patients as well as this may have a significant impact as well. References Psychopharmacology | Noba (nobaproject.com) What is Psychopharmacology? (news-medical.net)

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