III. Antidepressants a) Iproniazid i) The first modern drug, called Iproniazid, was developed as an antitubercular drug in the early 1950s. The drug decreased the number of tubercule bacilli in the septum and it also stimulated patients’ appetite, gave them energy, and restored them to general health. ii) Iproniazid suppressed the replication of bacteria, but the patients’ extra energy boost did not entirely derive from the medication. iii) Doctor Nathan Kline, a psychiatrist who invested the drug’s effects on the mind, hoped that an increase to a patient’s vital energy would reverse depression. (1) The large amount of energy would be easily available to the ego so that there would be more than enough energy available to the patient; resulting …show more content…
e) Kramer alluded to the tendency to listen to the drugs, in order to discover facts about the human body. i) The popular phenomena at the time, was medication. Scientist relied on medication response to infer the cause of a disease. (1) The use of drugs were used as probes to understand the mental disorders, by determining the effectiveness of the medication. f) The biogenic theory of depression in terms of our theoretical understandings of mental disorders was formed. i) The theory stated that the mood is determined in the brain by biogenic amines – complex chemicals who’s structure resembles that of ammonia. ii) Before antidepressants, amines were involved in the regulation of a variety of functions; from heart rate and stomach motility, to alertness and sleep. (1) Iproniazid and Imipramine concluded that amines regulated mood but it could not be proved. (a) The amine hypothesis could not support the effects of the drugs. The drugs did not have an immediate effect on the patient’s neurotransmitters, perplexing the doctors of the time lag. If the amine hypothesis was true, the drugs should work instantaneously. g) Prozac (Fluoxetine