When
Were Antipsychotics First
Developed?
The
first drug used to treat
schizophrenia, chlorpromazine, was introduced during the 1950’s. This
compound
was developed by a French drug company
after Henri Laborit, a French neurosurgeon, found that a similar
compound was
successful at relaxing patients prior to surgery. Because this
compound
was so effective at relaxing his patients, Laborit decided to test
whether
it would
also serve as a tranquilizer for patients with
schizophrenia. It turned out to be that this drug also
decreases psychosis.
When first developed, chlorpromazine was used
by patients with different types of mental disorders such as mania,
anxiety,
depression neurosis and schizophrenia. However, it showed to be most
effective
at substantially decreasing the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia.
Chlorpromazine is now classified as an typical neuroleptic (Carlson
2001).
Image taken
from http://netmeeting0.free.fr/divx/wallpapers/Images1/pills.jpg
