Responses to three articles

In the first article psychopharmacology for the Clinician it discusses medication used to treat Alzheimer’s disease. This study was a randomized placebo 6 month study. It looked to see the loss of benefit of medication on a patient suffering from this disease. The study shows that after one week after stopping of the drug there would be considerable signs that the drug had stopped working. It was also used to treat dementias as well. The study also looked at switching different type of drugs to see the effects they would have on the people. It showed that there was a significant reaction when drugs were discontinued and replaced with others.

The Second article I read was Pediatric psychopharmacology: a review of new developments and recent research. I found this article to be very interesting and I am interested in pursing this for my research paper. The article discusses many different types of drugs for treating children who suffer from, depression, behavioral disorders and some psychotic disorders. It was very interesting to read about all the medication and how some of the medications have just a placebo type of effect whereas other medications help. Such as the SSRI’s used to treat depression. Obviously this is a fairly new field of study so the article discusses the many draw backs about proving efficacy.

I also found it interesting that a pediatrician is not really advised to prescribe drugs without consulting a psychologist. The article describes a battery of tests that a physician should administer while trying to prescribe drugs to young children. The article also raises several issues concerning if children should be treated with these drugs or if they are more designed for adults. There was also mention of parents not really wanting to medicate their children so young or the issue of a teacher saying they should be medicated and the parents not really wanting to medicate their child.

The last article I read was a review of pharmocokinetics and I did not really understand this study. I understood that they were trying to test out some type of dopamine receptor druge and they used subjects that were considered “normal” or “healthy” and they used subjects who were in need of this drug. They also used double blinds and stroop tests in order to test cognition. But as far as what they were trying to prove I could not understand all the medical jargon so I am going to ask questions about it while I meet with you. Maybe you could help shed some light on the situation. I also had difficulty trying to read all the graphs and tables that they were trying to prove their results. One of the things I did comprehend was that it seemed that lower doses of the drug were ok, but when higher doses of the drug were administered it affected memory loss and they almost had a sedative type of effect. But that was pretty much I got out of that last article.