Psychopharmacology

The term psychopharmacology appears to have been first used in 1920 by David Macht (pharmacologist at Johns Hopkins University) in a paper titled “Contributions to Psychopharmacology.” This term was a variation of the term pharmacopsychology, which was used by the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin in 1892. However, it was the discovery of chlorpromazine in France for the treatment of psychosis in 1952, quickly followed by the introduction of other psychotherapeutic drugs such as reserpine (derived from the root of Rauwolfia serpentina), that ushered in the new discipline that today is called psychopharmacology. As a discipline, psychopharmacology studies the effects of drugs on behavior and the mind and tends to focus on drugs that are used to treat mental health and psychological disorders and drugs ...

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