When You Don't Know Where to Turn / A Self-Diagnosing Guide to Counseling and Therapy

by Steven J. Bartlett

Antianxiety, or Anxiolytic, Drugs

These are the so-called minor tranquilizers. They are sedatives for the waking hours that are prescribed for people who have excessive tension and anxiety.

Neuroleptics, or Antipsychotics

Psychosis is a disorder that impairs a person's abilities to think, remember, communicate, respond with appropriate emotions, and interpret reality without great distortion. People who have these difficulties can often be treated effectively with neuroleptic or antipsychotic drugs, also known as the major tranquilizers, which have specific effects on the brain's activity.

Sedative-Hypnotic Drugs

These drugs act as sedatives at low doses and produce a "hypnotic" action at higher doses. (The word hypnotic as used by pharmacologists does not refer to a hypnotic trance but means simply that a drug causes drowsiness and reduces motor activity.) In even larger doses, these drugs act as anesthetics. Antianxiety drugs, the minor tranquilizers, can be grouped with these drugs because of their sedative effect.

Antidepressants

These drugs are used primarily to treat what psychiatrists call endogenous depression—that is, major, incapacitating depression that is not associated with an outside event or situation. Depressions that occur after the loss of a job, the death of someone close, or some other external event are called exogenous depressions. They can sometimes be treated effectively with antidepressants, but drug therapy for situation-induced depression generally is less successful.

Lithium therapy is a specific treatment primarily for manic-depressive disorders. Lithium carbonate is a naturally occurring mineral salt. For manic-depressive patients—with wide swings of mood from feeling extremely energetic and emotionally high to feeling seriously depressed—lithium therapy may offer help as a mood stabilizer.