Sections
Ethical Considerations in Psychopharmacological Treatment and
Research: Introduction | Ethics, Psychopharmacology, and the Public Trust | Essential Ethics Skills of Psychopharmacologists | Selected Ethical Issues in Psychopharmacology | Management of the Split-Treatment Relationship | Ethical Issues in Psychopharmacological Research | Management of Overlapping Roles and Conflicts of
Interest in Psychopharmacology | Conclusion | References
Excerpt
The discovery of chlorpromazine's effectiveness
in treating symptoms of schizophrenia in 1952 (Delay and Deniker 1952) launched the modern era of pharmacological treatment
of psychiatric disease and was a critical development in the compassionate
care of people living with mental illness and in the reduction of
the societal burden of mental disease. Chlorpromazine's
introduction was followed in 1958 by the introduction of imipramine
as a treatment for depression (Kuhn 1958) and in 1960
by that of chlordiazepoxide for anxiety (Shorter 1997).
Within years, these medications eased the symptoms of hundreds of
thousands of the most severely and persistently ill individuals—many
of whom otherwise would have endured a lifetime of suffering, disability,
and institutionalization, as had millions before them.