Word: prozac
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...days. His foes say he opposes all psychiatry or that he wants to free even incompetent patients who can't feed themselves. Neither is true. But at a time when psychiatry's power has grown dramatically--when it seems normal to grow up taking Ritalin and then graduate to Prozac, when even shyness is treated with pharmaceuticals--his views are worth revisiting. And the Yoder case offers an ideal venue in which...
...treatment." Mild cases of misbehavior involving housebreaking and chewing are still handled with conventional treatments: training, along with diet and exercise changes. More serious problems--overly aggressive dogs, compulsive lickers and tail chasers, cats that urinate all over the house--are often treated with well-known antidepressants (Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac). Not surprisingly, some pets end up on the same medicines as their owners. That fuels some vets' criticism that the treatment is just an exercise in anthropomorphizing the animals. But Dodman, a pioneer in this field, writes of Romeo, a King Charles spaniel that was a compulsive licker. Romeo also...
Certainly antidepressants, like the serotonin reuptake inhibitors (Prozac and others) have proved very helpful in treating anxiety; some doctors think they are even more effective against anxiety than they are against depression. Although no one knows exactly why these antidepressants work, one important clue is that their effects don't show up until after a few weeks of treatment. The pathways for toning down anxiety are apparently much more resistant than those for ratcheting...
ANTIDEPRESSANTS When talk therapy doesn't work--or needs a boost--drugs can help, especially the class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Prozac is the best known of these drugs, which work by preventing the brain from reabsorbing too much of the neurotransmitter serotonin, leaving more in nerve synapses and thus helping to improve mood. Another SSRI, Paxil, was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration specifically for the treatment of social-anxiety disorder, though the others seem to work as well. A third, Zoloft, has been approved for OCD and panic disorder. Each formulation of SSRI...
PLACEBO POWER Move over, Prozac. It looks as if sugar pills can chase the blues away too. A six-week clinical trial in which doctors used PET scans to examine the brains of 17 patients hospitalized for depression shows that high-priced antidepressants and dummy pills both cause visible changes in the mood-regulating regions of the brain. Asked how they felt, patients on fake and real pills alike reported that their symptoms improved. But don't tear up your prescription just yet. The catch? The subjects' moods may have lifted in part because they had left their usual worries...