Invitation to Psychology

Chapter 12 Approaches to Treatment and Therapy 425

Recite & Review

Recite: Take a breath, and say out loud everything you can recall about antipsychotic drugs,

kinds of antidepressant drugs, tranquilizers, and lithium carbonate; cautions about drug treatments;

and psychosurgery, ECT, TMS, and tDCS.

Review: Next, given all the information you need to digest, reread this section.

Now take this Quick Quiz:

A. Match these treatments with the problems for which they are typically used.

1. antipsychotic drugs


2. antidepressant drugs


3. lithium carbonate


4. electroconvulsive therapy

Study and Review at MyPsychLab

a. suicidal depression

b. bipolar disorder

c. schizophrenia

d. depression and anxiety

e. obsessive-compulsive disorder

B. What are five cautions about taking medications for psychological disorders?

C. Several years ago, a news story reported that scientists had high hopes for new pills that

would help people quit smoking, lose weight, and kick their addictions. The pills suppos-

edly worked by blocking pleasure centers in the brain that make people feel good when they

smoke, overeat, drink liquor, or use other drugs. Based on what you have read in this section,

what might you have learned in a follow-up story two years later? Why?

Answers:

Placebo effects are common; dropout and relapse rates are high, especially when dosages are B. a4. b3. d, e2. c1. A.

too high; the availability of medication may prevent people from trying a possibly better nonmedical solution first; some drugs

have unknown or long-term risks; and some drugs are prescribed off label for conditions for which they were never tested

You might have learned about unexpected side effects of the new C. or for populations they were not originally tested on.

pills or their lack of effectiveness. In this case, a subsequent news story reported that “Now it seems the drugs may block

pleasure too well, possibly raising the risk of depression and suicide.” Indeed, one company’s pill to help people quit smoking

has been linked to dozens of reports of suicides and suicide attempts, and two obesity pills have been tied to higher rates of

suicide and depression. Early reports of drugs in the testing pipeline usually promise exciting results, but many of these drugs

do not pan out.

by stimulating the brain externally. The oldest
method is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), or “shock
therapy,” which is used for the treatment of severe
depression, although no one knows why it works.
An electrode is placed on one side of the head and
a brief current is turned on. The current triggers
a seizure that typically lasts one minute, caus-
ing the body to convulse. In the past, there were
many horror stories about the misuse of ECT
and its dire effects on memory. Today, patients
are given muscle relaxants and anesthesia, so they
sleep through the procedure and their convulsions
are minimized. The World Psychiatric Association
and the FDA have endorsed ECT as safe and
effective, especially for people with episodes of
crippling depression and suicidal impulses who
have not responded to other treatments (Shorter
& Healy, 2008). Still, the mood-improving effect
of ECT is usually short-lived, and the depres-
sion almost always returns within a few weeks
or months (U.S. Food and Drug Administration,
2011; Hollon, Thase, & Markowitz, 2002). ECT
is occasionally misused for other disorders, such

electroconvulsive

therapy (ECT) A pro-

cedure used in cases of

prolonged and severe ma-

jor depression, in which

a brief brain seizure is

induced.

as schizophrenia or alcoholism, even though it is

ineffective for these conditions.

Neuroscientists are investigating other ways

of electrically stimulating the brains of severely

depressed individuals (Nitsche et al., 2009). In

Chapter 4 we described two such technologies. One

is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in which a

magnetic coil is held to a person’s skull over the left

prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that is less ac-

tive in people with depression. The other is transcra-

nial direct current stimulation (tDCS), in which two

electrodes are placed on the temples, and a mild cur-

rent (one-400th of the level used in ECT) modulates

the resting level of the brain’s neurons. As with ECT,

the benefits of these two methods are short-lived,

but they are effective with some patients and have

fewer side effects than ECT (George & Post, 2011).

A double-blind controlled trial of tDCS with 120

Brazilian patients suffering from depression found

significant improvement after six weeks of almost

daily treatment (Brunoni et al., 2013), but no follow-

ups have yet been done to determine how long the

improvement lasts.