The treatment of chronic pain with psychotropic drugs

Abstract

Summary: The treatment is described of thirty patients with chronic nervous system lesion causing intractable pain. Moderately good relief of pain was obtained with a combination of phenothiazines (especially pericyazine), antidepressant drugs and antihistamines. The theoretical implications of this are discussed and it is suggested that the drugs in question act partly by virtue of an effect on the multisynaptic neuronal systems whose activities are related to the experience of pain.