Word: tofranil
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...many critics, though, the key problem with SSRIs is that they are too widely - and casually - prescribed. When the first antidepressant, imipramine (Tofranil), was developed just over 50 years ago, maker Ciba-Geigy balked at taking it to market for fear there weren't enough depressed people in the world to make it profitable. The wisdom of the time was that endogenous depression affected, at the most, about 1 in 1,000 people at some time in their lives. Things have changed. Groups such as beyondblue now promote the idea that about 1 in 5 people will become depressed during...
...arrival of whole new classes of psychotropic drugs with fewer side effects and greater efficacy than earlier medications, particularly the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), or antidepressants. These have been rolled out with highly visible, to-the-consumer ad campaigns. While an earlier generation of antidepressants--tricyclics like Tofranil--didn't work in kids, SSRIs do. According to a study by Professor Julie Zito of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, use of antidepressants among children and teens increased threefold between 1987 and 1996. And that use continues to climb...
...another. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and the other SSRIs slow the absorption of serotonin. Effective antidepressants that act on both serotonin and norepinephrine include Effexor and Remeron. Drugs like Wellbutrin work in a similar way but probably on the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine. The tricyclic antidepressants (such as Elavil and Tofranil) also blocked the absorption of neurotransmitters, especially norepinephrine, but the drugs had significant side effects. Another class of first-generation drugs, the monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) such as Nardil and Marplan, can be effective but can also produce dangerous side effects. A transdermal patch just approved by the Food...
...accidental discovery in the 1950s of the first synthetic tranquilizer, chlorpromazine (Thorazine), ushered in a gentler age of psychopharmacology. As other feel-good pills followed--Tofranil (imipramine) for depression, Miltown and Equanil (meprobamate) for psychosis, Valium (diazepam) for severe anxiety and lithium for manias--no mental illness seemed beyond their reach. Governments began emptying mental wards on the assumption that madness could be medicated--ignoring the fact that thousands of former inmates ended up living, and suffering, in the streets...