Written by Giuseppe Orlando psychotherapist for the Giornale di Gela
Sunday 27 November 2011 – 09:51
Gela In the first decades of the 1900s, nascent pharmacological research identified a dye used in biology to color cells: aniline. Thus it was found that one of its derivatives, promethazine, possessed interesting sedative and anti-allergic properties. Chlorpromazine, derived from promethazine, was the first decidedly effective product in the treatment of psychosis.
Henry Laborit discovered that this molecule, initially used as a sedative, in the operating room to enhance anesthesia, or for patients with intractable pain crises, in association with narcotics and barbiturates. It was noted, however, that chlorpromazine also had a particular property, called "pharmacological lobotomy", i.e. the property of inducing a state of blunting of the senses, reflexes and thought. Introduced into psychiatric practice in 1953, neuroleptics soon became the "chemical straitjacket" used in all asylums, thus replacing barbiturates, insulin shocks, electroshocks and lobotomy.
Thanks to the enormous commercial success of chlorpromazine, the search for new neuroleptics was in any case underway, in fact within about ten years almost all the major classes of antipsychotic products that we currently have were identified and perfected.
Research has now led us to have around twenty different phenothiazines available, products that are structurally very similar to chlorpomazine. In addition to phenothiazines we therefore find thioxanthenes, dibenzazepines, butyrophenone, diphenylbutylpiperidines and others. All these drugs can produce often serious joint side effects consisting of tremors, stiffness, reduced facial expressions, etc. Neuroleptics, also known as antipsychotic drugs, major tranquilizers or neuroplegics, are among the heaviest psychoactive drugs for the human body. The term neuroleptic means: "drug with strong sedative action on the central nervous system".
Sedative therapy has no therapeutic logic other than that of symptom control; in fact, neuroleptics are typically used in psychiatry (it is rare for a general practitioner to prescribe them) to control and contain people who are labeled "schizophrenic", "psychotic", "
