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The agents we will consider in this chapter are a disparate bunch, but they are united in that most can induce a mild state of intoxication that many of us find to be pleasant; social drinkers of ethyl alcohol are familiar with the phenomenon. The darker side of these drugs is that all can induce physical dependence with a characteristic and sometimes life-threatening withdrawal syndrome. In addition, they are often agents of addiction; alcoholism is a prime example. Further uniting these drugs is the relatively recent recognition of a common mechanism of action. Their current primary medical uses are in anesthesiology, as anticonvulsants, and in the treatment of anxiety and sleep disorders. For many years, drugs of this class were referred to as sedative- hypnotics. Sedation implies the induction of a state of calmness, while hypnosis refers to sleep. However, with the discovery of meprobamate (Miltown), and the benzodiazepines, for example, Valium, which we will consider later, a third term was introduced. These drugs were to be called tranquilizers to distinguish them from earlier sedative-hypnotics. But whatever the drugs are called, the fact is that for most there is a dose-related continuum of action beginning with a state of calmness (call it tranquility, if you wish) to sleep, and, finally, for some, coma and death. An illustration of the long- recognized connectedness of sedation, hypnosis, and anxiety was provided us by Henry Behrend. He describes his patient as … … a gentleman, forty years of age… . He was of a most excitable and nervous temperament, and was engaged in mercantile transactions of great magnitude, the extent of which seemed quite to overwhelm him… . He had lost his natural sleep, was harassed and fatigued during the day, and sought my opinion as to whether he ought not at once to withdraw from business, although the sacrifice entailed thereby would be very great, and he was most anxious to avoid it… .

The Hole-Board is an ethologically based tool for investigating the anxiety-related behavior of rats following manipulation of the central anxiety level. The present paper aims to assess behavioral patterning following pharmacological manipulation of emotional assets in Wistar rats tested in this experimental apparatus. For this purpose, the behavior of three groups of rats injected with saline, diazepam or FG7142 was evaluated using conventional quantitative and multivariate Tpattern analyses. The results demonstrate that quantitative analyses of individual components of the behavior, disjointed from the comprehensive behavioral structure, are of narrow utility in the understanding of the subject’s emotional condition. Among the components of the behavioral repertoire in rodents tested in the Hole-Board, Edge-Sniff and Head-Dip represent the most significant ones to rate anxiety level. They are characterized by a strong bivariate relationship and are also firmly part of the behavioral architecture, as revealed by the T-pattern analysis (TPA), a multivariate technique able to detect significant relationships among behavioral events over time. Edge-Sniff ! Head-Dip sequences, in particular, are greatly influenced by the level of anxiety: barely detectable in control animals, they completely disappear in subjects with a reduced level of anxiety and are present in almost 25% of the total of T-patterns detected in subjects whose anxiety level increased., peer-reviewed

It is probably safe to say that there is nothing that has not been done to try to help people who have what is called “mental illness”–soft music and scalding in hot water, snake pits and electric current through the brain, stinging showers, starvation, milk diets, tranquilizing drugs and free association and casting out of devils and good hard work–but none can yet be said to be truly effective. Psychotherapy, especially since the days of Freud, has come to mean a treatment that is made up mainly of talk, a verbal exchange between the patient and the person who is trying to help him. With the development of this kind of treatment, it has been increasingly recognized that psychotherapy is characterized not only by its techniques, but also by the personal relationship between the patient and his therapist. This being so, the therapist himself, his background, attitudes, experiences, and personality must be put under the microscope for careful scrutiny and analysis if valid knowledge about how to treat mental illness is to be obtained.

Probablement sous-estimes, car non recherches, l'abus et la dependance a des medicaments ou des substances psycho-actives peuvent avoir chez le sujet âge des consequences sur la vie quotidienne, voire se reveler par des complications somatiques, cognitives ou psychiatriques. Parmi les medicaments, les psychotropes, notamment les benzodiazepines, les antalgiques opiaces sont le plus souvent en cause, mais les drogues illicites peuvent aussi, plus rarement, etre consommees par le sujet âge

Victims of major depressive illness often find that this disease shapes their sense of self in profound and lasting ways. Exactly how individuals experience and give meaning to their depression, however, varies through history and across cultures. This article considers two revolutions in the conceptualization of depression: the modern revolution in the late nineteenth century that turned from a religious to a psychological outlook; and the postmodern revolution, that supplants the psychological with the biochemical. Historically western culture has valued melancholy for its poetic, artistic and philosophical virtues. The depressed conciousness has often been viewed as a fount of genius or inspired truth. What if, in fact, it primarily reflects biochemical instabilities? What can or should the depressed ‘do’ with their biochemically unstable consciousness? What kind of self emerges from the biochemical understanding of depression? This article argues that the psychological self retained significant ties with the divine soul, and that it retained depression as a central locus of meaning and cultural effervescence. The biochemical revolution cuts the self free from depression’s narratives. This radical freedom opens onto uncharted terrain for the elaboration of selfhood. Whether individuals will seize this freedom to create new narratives and what those narratives might be remains to be seen.

De recentes etudes sur l'abus de toxiques, notamment l'alcool et les drogues, chez les femmes amerindiennes enceintes ou ayant des enfants en bas âge en Californie, ont permis d'etablir un bilan des conditions sanitaires et des utilisations des services sanitaires publics. Les approches historiques, les indicateurs de sante et les rapports cliniques ont montre que les femmes amerindiennes etaient le plus expose a la consommation de toxiques. Les resultats precis concernant uniquement l'Etat de Californie (et non la generalisation des resultats obtenus a l'echelle nationale ou parmi l'ensemble des communautes amerindiennes) restent rares ; ils montrent que la mortalite infantile perinatale et celle des femmes a l'accouchement sont plus elevees que les moyennes obtenues dans d'autres regions. L'A. presente sa methode d'enquete aupres de nombreuses femmes recrutees par diverses agences de la baie de San Fransisco et de la cote Nord-Ouest, puis les resultats d'une analyse statistique des donnees demographiques, des frequences et quantites de consommation d'alcool, de tabac, de drogues dures et douces, des besoins sanitaires et du suivi medical.

The quest to link micro and macro phenomena in symbolic interactionism has gained considerable attention over the years. The present study builds on this endeavor by linking micro and macro phenome...

Màster Oficial en Enginyeria Biomèdica, El análisis del EEG se ha convertido en una técnica de gran utilidad para la detección de interacciones funcionales entre diversas áreas corticales durante la terapia con fármacos. Se conoce el efecto de algunos fármacos sobre parámetros espectrales calculados en señales EEG univariable, pero su efecto en las interacciones entre las áreas cerebrales no es del todo conocido. Tradicionalmente, tanto la coherencia como la correlación han sido los métodos principales para el estudio del grado de conectividad funcional entre las áreas cerebrales y los cambios asociados a los efectos psicofisiológicos de fármacos, pero únicamente tienen en cuenta dependencias lineales entre señales EEG. En el presente proyecto se ha diseñado y aplicado algoritmos para el cálculo de la Entropía Condicional Cruzada Corregida en señales electroencefalográficas, con el objetivo principal de evaluar la idoneidad y el rendimiento de esta técnica para el análisis de la conectividad funcional en el cerebro en sujetos sometidos en terapia farmacológica. El principal objetivo del proyecto consiste en definir y obtener nuevos índices capaces de facilitar información relacionada con los cambios en el acoplamiento entre las regiones cerebrales durante la vigilia tras la administración de fármacos. El análisis de la conectividad mediante técnicas no lineales puede proporcionar información valiosa sobre sus efectos psicofarmacológicos sobre las áreas cerebrales. Esta memoria describe brevemente la fisiología básica necesaria para comprender el origen de la señal EEG, así como las raíces históricas y las características básicas de esta señal electrofisiológica, para a continuación revisar brevemente los antecedentes y el estado actual del análisis sobre conectividad cerebral, y presentar las hipótesis que sustentan su aplicación en el campo de los estudios farmacológicos. En el apartado de metodología se describe con detalle la base de datos utilizada y el cálculo y aplicación de la técnica no lineal seleccionada: la entropía condicional. A partir de las funciones obtenidas se extraen variables que caracterizan la conectividad o acoplamiento entre señales, y que finalmente, como se describe en el capítulo de resultados, han permitido diferenciar la actividad cerebral tras la administración de una única dosis de alprazolam, abriendo el camino para futuros estudios basados en esta metodología en el terreno de la conectividad cerebral., Universitat de Barcelona. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Joan Francesc Alonso López

Many theories have been formulated to explain memory from the functional viewpoint. It has frequently been fractionated into short-term and long-term components (Waugh and Norman, 1965; Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968) although there is disagreement about whether apparent differences between the two components reflect the existence of two different storage systems or a single general memory system with different types of encoding (Listcr, 1985). It is clear that, despite the successes obtained, the multi-store approach can no longer be regarded as an adequate theoretical conceptualisation of the architecture of the memory system (Eysenck, 1988). However, this oversimplification can provide a useful approach for describing the amnesic effects of benzodiazepines., peer-reviewed

[eng] El objetivo de la presente Tesis ha sido la caracterización del mecanismo de acción de los receptores benziodiacepínicos a nivel de algunos tejidos periféricos, utilizando para ello el agonista específico de los receptores benzodiacepínicos periféricos, el Ro 5-4864, el antagonista PK 11195, un agonista mixto de los receptores benzodiacepínicos centrales y periféricos, el diazepam, y un agonista específico de los receptores benzodiacepínicos centrales, el clonazepam. El hecho de que estos compuestos hayan presentado una actividad moduladora de diferentes procesos de contracción del músculo liso, hace que sea interesante determinar el mecanismo concreto de acción a este nivel. Se han utilizado fármacos específicos del receptor gabaérgico para determinar la posible implicación del sistema gabaérgico en las acciones de las benzodiacepinas a nivel de tejidos periféricos. Asimismo, para dilucidar la posible relación de estos compuestos con los canales de calcio voltaje-dependientes se han realizado estudios comparativos con antagonistas de los canales de calcio voltaje-dependientes, para determinar la implicación de estos compuestos en la movilización del calcio a nivel de la membrana celular. También se ha estudiado la influencia de estos compuestos en la movilización del calcio a nivel de sus almacenes intracelulares y a través de su regulación por el sistema de segundos mensajeros de los fosfatidilinositoles. Por otra parte, la demostrada capacidad que presentan las benzodiacepinas de inhibir la recaptación de la adenosina, relaciona estos compuestos con otros de acción similar, como el dipiridamol. El dipiridamol es también capaz de inhibir la actividad de la fosfodiesterasa a nivel del sistema circulatorio, lo que explica su efecto inhibidor de la agregación plaquetaria. Teniendo en cuenta la relación existente entre los procesos de contracción-relajación muscular y la actividad de este enzima, se ha determinado también la acción de las benzodiacepinas sobre este enzima y la posible relación de éste con el mecanismo de acción de estos compuestos a nivel periférico.

The effects of chlordiazepoxide (2.5–15.0 mg/kg), a full benzodiazepine receptor agonist, and bretazenil (5.0–30.0 mg/kg), a partial benzodiazepine receptor agonist, were examined in the murine elevated plus-maze paradigm. Behaviours recorded comprised the traditional indices of anxiety as well as a

The present study examined sex differences in the responses of domestic chicks to novelty and exposure to a startling stimulus. In the first experiment, 7-day-old male and female chicks were placed individually in a novel environment for 10-min periods. After 5 min, half of the chicks were exposed to a loud bell. Males showed more passive behaviour such as freezing, sitting and eye-closure and were less active and less vocal than females, both before and after exposure to the bell. Ringing the bell increased immobility and reduced activity and vocalisation in both sexes thus confirming its effectiveness as a fear-elicitor. The second experiment involved injecting males and females with either a tranquilliser (Pacitran) or water. Immobility decreased whereas peeping and walking increased in the Pacitran-injected groups both before and after the bell was rung. The behaviour of untranquillised, water-injected females was comparable to that of Pacitran- treated males. These results may reflect sex differences in either the form of fear responding or the underlying levels of fearfulness; the latter seems more likely.

RESERPINE and chlorpromazine, two tranquilizing drugs used widely in human medicine, have been employed at this laboratory in an investigation of effects on physiological function in the domestic fowl (Burger et al., 1957; Van Matre et al., 1957; to be reported in more detail elsewhere). Determination of acute and chronic toxicity levels of these drugs for fowl was a necessary incident to investigation of the effective pharmacological range. Some of the resulting data warrant being placed on record because of certain generalizations implicit in their interpretation. This paper will report observations of overt behavior, gain in body weight, and mortality of young birds fed diets containing various levels of reserpine and chlorpromazine. MATERIALS AND METHODS Most of the experiments were performed on Single Comb White Leghorn chicks. New Hampshire chicks were employed in two trials and Broad Breasted Bronze poults in one. All birds were from the Department stock and …

Twelve devices of about the same type as HESSS, (6), consisting of two parts and a container, as shown in Fig. 1 were used, one device for each rat.After some adaptation procedures for 11 days, each of 12 white rats, weighing 231 to 330g and about 4 months old at the beginning of the experiment, was allowed to hoard through the alley to its home cage Oriental Lab MF pellets (2g. a piece) laid in the container for 30 minutes under 22. 5-hour food deprivation condition every day for successive 16 days.On the day when each rat's hoarding behavior reached comparative stability after the first 7 days of the 16 days, one of two tranquilizers, chlorpromazine and chlordiazepoxide, was injected two hours before the beginning of 30-minute hoarding trials for that day. The other drug was injected in the same way on the third day after the previous injection. Except the additional injection, the procedures on the injection day were quite the same as those on the day of non-injection. The schedules are shown in Table 1.The numbers of carrying pellets, the amount of carried pellets and hoarded pellets, and other factors such as temperature, food intake were measured.As others were of about the same trend and other influencing factors on the hoarding than drugs used were statistically insignificant, only the main results were shown in Fig. 2. and Table 2.The two tranquilizing drugs surprisingly inhibited the hoarding behavior, which, considering the nature of the drugs, led the writer to this conclusion : that there is not an only special exclusive condition which accompanies hoarding behavior directly as referred to in many conventional studies on hoarding, but hoarding behavior appears as a result of more general and indirect processes with several steps of state elements mediated between the input of any of many special conditions and the output of hoarding behavior. The mediating processes can be activated by any of many special conditions, become more general step by step, and induce integrated hoarding behavior.

The availability of so-called tranquilizing drugs as adjuncts to the therapy of emotionally disturbed children is of such recent origin that few reviews of their use in this regard have as yet appeared. The present article discusses a tentative classification of these substances, their general effects, probable mode of action and potential hazards. Included is a brief review of the literature concerning the use of the following preparations as tranquilizers for children: chlorpromazine, reserpine, azacyclonol, hydroxyzine and meprobamate. Indications for their use are briefly outlined, as are some of the principles of their effective administration. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that tranquilizing drugs may be useful for the relief of symptoms, but that in the total treatment of emotionally disturbed children all other available means of psychologic management should also be employed.

A MEANS of minimizing carcass damage resulting from fighting and handling of growing turkeys without adversely affecting other economically important physiological traits would be of value in turkey production. Reserpine, one of the alkaloid-base tranquilizing drugs having a wide application in human medicine, has been reported by Carlson (1956) to quiet maturing turkeys and suppress fighting at levels of 0.5 and 1.0 mg./kg. of feed but proved detrimental to growth and feed efficiency. Burger et al. (1959) found a significant increase in growth of five-week-old poults fed reserpine (from mother liquor) at 1.0 mg./kg. feed. Higher dosage levels resulted in early growth depression which was partially overcome by the end of the trial. A similar early growth depression with subsequent recovery was observed in an earlier study in this laboratory (Anderson and Smyth, unpublished) with broiler type chickens. A recent report by Ringer (1959) indicates that levels of reserpine below …

Many investigators agree that physicians' attitudes toward tranquilizing medication may influence their patients' drug response. Some empirical studies have supported this belief and shown that, in general, a physician holding a positive, enthusiastic, and favorable attitude toward drugs will obtain a relatively better response from his patients than one who is not so favorably disposed to medication (1, 3). It seems only logical then to extend these findings by investigating the relationship between the attitudes a patient holds toward medication and his response to a drug. This paper presents the preliminary attempts to investigate this problem by describing (a) the construction and development of a projective sentencecompletion test to measure a patient's attitudes toward medication, (b) the initial data on scoring and reliability, and (c) the potential theoretical and practical implications of such a measuring device.

Lesions were placed in the left ventromedial tegmental area of the brains of nine monkeys (Macaca mulatto). After 1–4 months, the brains were removed, and the striatum was dissected and prepared for chemical analysis. In seven animals in which the lesion was strictly unilateral, the striatal dopamine was very much reduced below the level found on the intact side of the brain. In the two monkeys in which the lesion impinged on the right side of the brain, the concentration of dopamine was reduced on both sides. Homovanillic acid and 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid, metabolic derivatives of dopamine, were measured in the left and right striata of four and five monkeys respectively. Both compounds were present at subnormal concentrations on the side of the lesion. The concentration of homovanillic acid did not fall to as great an extent as did that of dopamine. These results are discussed in relation to data reported by others in regard to (a) animals treated with tranquilizing drugs, and (b) brains of patients who died with Parkinson's disease.

A sample of patients discharged from a state hospital was interviewed at regular intervals; this preliminary report includes information obtained at the 6 months' follow-up. In addition to an evaluation of observed, objective well-being ("adjustment"), information was obtained from the patients concerning their continued use of tranquilizing medicine. 1. very large percentage of patients are discharged with the recommendation that they continue on a regime of tranquilizing medication. 2. As time goes on, the percentage of patients who follow this advice decreases significantly, and even those who report that they continue to use the tranquilizing drugs become less "regular" in their medical regime. 3. In this study no conclusive evidence could be found that patients remaining on a tranquilizing drug did any "better" than those who did not: there is no significant difference in the rehospitalization rate, nor is there a significant difference in their observable functioning in the community. Therefore wher...

(1967). Infantile Shock Traumatization and the Mitigating Effects of Tranquilizing Drugs. The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Vol. 111, No. 2, pp. 263-270.

A PREVIOUS report by Ostmann, Ringer and Tetzlaff (1963) indicated that anesthetics, sympathetic and parasympathetic blocking agents, and tranquilizing drugs caused the feather to loosen within its follicle. These workers did not clarify the exact role played by the muscles and wall of the feather follicle in feather release. An experiment using intrafollicular pressure as a measurement was designed to study the mechanism involved in the loose and tight states within the feather follicle. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE Mature S. C. White Leghorn hens were secured on an operating cradle which held them virtually motionless. A mature feather was randomly selected for studying intrafollicular pressure from either the femoral or caudal feather tract. With procaine used as a local anesthetic, one of the brachial veins was then cannulated for the subsequent injection of sodium pentobarbital. All feather shafts in the immediate area of the chosen feather were cut at the level of…

BETWEEN THE end of fiscal years 1955 and 1956, the number of patients resident in the public mental hospitals of the nation (exclusive of VA) decreased from 559,420 to 552,005, a drop of 7,415 or 1.3 per cent. This was the second decrease ever noted in the population of these hospitals. The first occurred between 1942 and 1943 when the number of patients decreased by 0.3 per cent. The 1955-1956 decrease has aroused much interest since it occurred in the public mental hospital systems of 39 of the 48 States and the District of Columbia and occurred during a period when the use of tranquilizing drugs was reported to be quite widespread in most of these hospitals. In order to place the current decrease in its proper perspective and to assess its significance, it was decided to study trends in the size of these populations during a recent period of years. Thus, this paper will present an analysis of trends in (a) the number of resident patients, admissions, releases, and deaths in the public mental hospitals of the nation and-of each state during the period 1945-1955; (b) the crude resident patient rates per 100,000 population; and (c) rates of hospital population movement, such as the number of net releases and deaths per 1,000 average resident patient population, and relate the value of each index during 1955-1956 to the value expected from its trend during the 11-year period 1945-1955. The question to be investigated is, "How do the observed values of the various indexes of patient movement in 1956 compare with what would have been expected in this year on the basis of this 11-year trend ?" These analyses will also serve to indicate the inadequacy of currently available data for evaluating change in the size of these hospital populations and the complexity of the problems of assessing the effect of tranquilizers on patient movement. The authors will discuss a method for data collection and analysis that should yield more sensitive indexes for detecting significant changes in annual population movement and thus provide a better basis for assessing the effect of treatment innovations and new pro

VAN MATRE et al. (1957) reported in abstract that, under certain defined conditions, two tranquilizing drugs, reserpine and chlorpromazine prolonged the lives of chickens exposed to lethally elevated environmental temperatures. These observations led to further experiments. The experimental conditions, techniques, and results are placed on record here. MATERIALS AND METHODS S.C. White Leghorn chickens of randomly mated production stock were used in all experiments. Both males and females, varying in age from 9 to 120 days, were employed, but all birds in any single experiment were of the same sex and from the same hatch. The experimental drugs, reserpine, reserpine-free mother liquor, 1 and chlorpromazine, were mixed into the Poultry Department's regular commercial-type all-mash rations and fed to all birds as described by Burger et al. (1959). Shortly before each heat-shock experiment the feathers of all chicks were stained with water-soluble food coloring in 80% aqueous acetone; a different color was …

A detailed analysis was made of the process by which the wolf comes from a state of unfamiliarity and fear of humans to a state of familiarity and friendliness. The nature of the process was found to depend on the age of the animal as well as the technique employed by the experimenter. Although young cubs were found to respond positively to almost any form of human contact, the older cubs and juveniles required much more time and effort to socialize, and fully matured adults offered very special problems which required specialized techniques to overcome. Periods beyond which no socialization could occur were not found. Wolves socialized as cubs had to be reinforced repeatedly in order to maintain their social bond with humans; however, adult wolves retained their socialized behavior even after being left with unsocialized animals and not handled for 18-22 months. Wolves socialized with the aid of tranquilizing drugs (chlorpromazine, librium, and reserpine) did not retain their socialization when the drugs were withdrawn on a variety of schedules. The development of fear responses as the animals grow older, and the association of fear with the unfamiliar, closely parallel the increasing difficulty of acquiring socialized behavior as well as the decreasing difficulty of retaining that behavior once it is acquired. Socialization is viewed as a conditioning process which must take place after the development and in the presence of the free expression of the subjective components of fear, a separable aspect of the general phenomenon of genetic wildness.

64 albino rats received contiguous administrations of “major” and “minor” tranquilizing drugs and shock traumatization in infancy. The performance measures were avoidance conditioning and competition testing. The results indicate that drug administrations in infancy were effective in mitigating the effects of shock traumatization; major tranquilizing drugs were more effective than minor tranquilizing drugs under the conditions of this study. The findings were related to the state-dependent or dissociated learning phenomenon.

Chlorpromazine 6 mg/kg and reserpine 0.1 mg/kg were given subcutaneously to pregnant albino rats on days 4–7 of gestation in order to investigate in more detail previous reports of long-term behavioral modification of offspring by these drugs. Reserpine did not cause significant differences from controls. Chlorpromazine was shown to decrease motor activity and increase audiogenic seizure susceptibility in offspring. Those animals below average in weight and in motor activity were most likely to exhibit convulsive responses. These associated factors are interpreted as representing an altered behavioral complex. These abnormal responses were found in some animals of every chlorpromazine litter. No histological differences in the brains and no differences in susceptibility to amphetamine toxicity could be demonstrated in offspring of chlorpromazine-treated mothers.

Early published studies of the use of tranquilizers revealed wide variations in the methods of studying the clinical effectiveness of these drugs. Some studies omitted dosages used in arriving at conclusions regarding drug action. Others included dosage schedules but did not establish clearly the criteria on which these dosages were based. Generally the overall approach in these investigations was empirical. Currently, suggested dosage ranges of chlorpromazine, reserpine and meprobamate show a greater consistency than in the past. Three cases are presented to demonstrate some of the clinical problems encountered in the administration of these drugs. They emphasize the necessity of focusing on dose range-clinical response relationships in future investigations. The design of a small pilot study is presented. It is considered that this type of study offers the best opportunity to gain valuable information about dosage and drug effect when carefully and systematically performed.

Effects of two tranquilizers (CPZ, and homofenazine) upon shock-motivated behavior were studied as a function of the dose level (saline, 1, 2, 4, and 8 mg/kg, i. p.) and time after injection (0, 15, 30, 60, and 120 min.) with male rats satiated with food and water. CPZ was found to retard both starting and running time as an increase in dose level, and the same motor effect was maximal around 30 min. after injection under each dosage.On the other hand, no obvious dose-, nor time-response relationships were observed with the homofenazine-injected rats with respect to running time. Starting time was only slightly depressed by 8 mg/kg of homofenazine, and the time-response relationship in terms of starting time was not significant. However, conditioned avoidance response without electric shock was found to be depressed by homofenazine as an increasing function of dosage level. Thus it was hypothesized that the ataxic effect of homofenazine or the drug in general is a function of arousal level of the drugged animal.

Forty-six chronic schizophrenic patients were divided into two groups and treated for six months with tranquilizing drugs in two different settings, a large state hospital and a small treatment center. The rate of improvement was the same at the two hospitals. Marked or moderate improvement was made in one-third of the patients. Another one-fourth was slightly improved and the remainder unimproved. The discharge rate was significantly different at the two hospipitals. Eight patients (33 per cent) were discharged from the small hospital and one patient (5 per cent) was discharged from the large hospital. Discharges were to protected environments, similar in varying degrees to the patient's previous hospital life. The relation of drug therapy to social and psychological therapy in chronic schizophrenia is discussed. Drug treatment appeared to be related to the uniform improvement rate. Intensive social and psychological therapy appeared to increase significantly the discharge rate at the small hospital. The implications of the present study for the management and disposition of chronic schizophrenic patients are listed.

The tranquilizing drugs have found a place in the practice of dermatology especially in those cases in which psychogenic factors play a part.

A two-year study indicated that the more experienced the therapist is, the less he tends to use tranquilizing drugs to manage hospitalized psychotic patients. It was also observed that patients admitted during the weekend, when fewer therapists were available and hence less patient-therapist contact was possible, had a greater chance of receiving a prescription for medication.