Treatments of Schizophrenia
- Created by: Hannah
- Created on: 14-05-11 12:36
The Treatments of Schizophrenia:
1.Chemotherapy (biological approach)
· ‘Chemotherapy’- any treatment given by drugs and chemicals
· ‘Anti-psychotic drugs’ (neuroleptics) are used to treat schizo. and they repress the delusions and hallucinations
· Divided into ‘Typical’- well established, and ‘Atypical’-newer and less widely used.
· Most drugs work at the synapse either blocking or modelling a neurotransmitter
· Antipsychotic drugs like Haloperidol block dopamine receptors
· Side effects of antipsychotic drugs: shaking, weight gain, drowsiness, dizziness and low blood pressure
Evaluation:
+For most patients, antipsychotic drugs effectively calm the effects of schizo. on a long term basis. They are also relatively cheap and easy to administer and are more ethical than other treatments, such as lobotomies, used in 1950s
+Meltzer et al (2004)-chose patients with schizo and randomly assigned them into the placebo group , investigative drug group and the haloperidol group for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks, found that haloperidol gave significant improvement in all aspects of functioning. Hight validity that anti-psychotic drugs work
+Kane (1992) found chlorpromazine to be effective in 75% of cases
+Drug treatments rest on strong biological evidence which is reliable and valid, e.g. dopamine hypothesis, about the causes of schizo. Therefore, drugs would be considered effective and safe to use
-There are serious side effects related to antipsychotic drugs such as fatigue, shaking and drowsiness and because of this, 50% of patients tend to stop taking these drugs within the first year.
-around 25% of sufferers do not respond to chemotherapy. Kane et al (1988) found between 10-15% of patients do not improve if given drugs. Therefore, anti-psychotic drugs do not work for everyone
-some patients’ bodies become dependent on anti-psychotics which means higher and higher does are needed to keep the symptoms at bay. This means a patient could OD and ethically, the side…
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