CHLORPROMAZINE IN THE TREATMENT OF NEUROPSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS

Abstract

The management of anxiety, agitation, and manic states in psychoneurotic and in psychotic patients is a problem inadequately solved by current therapeutic measures. Moreover, conditions such as severe obsessive-compulsive neuroses, chronic hypochondriasis, chronic schizophrenia, and agitated senile states are not consistently amenable either to convulsive or coma therapy or to psychoanalysis and other means of psychotherapy. To control the ever-increasing incidence of psychiatric disturbances, additional therapeutic aids are needed. Recent studies conducted in Europe suggest the usefulness of a new drug, chlorpromazine, for managing and treating psychoneuroses and psychoses. Chemically it is 10-(γ-diethylaminopropyl)-2-chlorophenothiazine hydrochloride. Laboratory investigations¹ revealed that this compound possessed diverse pharmacological activity. Provocative from a psychiatric standpoint was its ability to abolish conditioned reflex responses in animals. Chlorpromazine was developed in France and was first studied by French and other European investigators in surgery² and then in obstetrics³ and psychiatry.⁴ Observations by Delay, Deniker,