Psychiatric Medication - Types

Types

See also: list of psychiatric medications and list of psychiatric medications by condition treated

There are six main groups of psychiatric medications.

  • Antidepressants, which treat disparate disorders such as clinical depression, dysthymia, anxiety, eating disorders and borderline personality disorder.
  • Stimulants, which treat disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and narcolepsy, and to suppress the appetite.
  • Antipsychotics, which treat psychoses such as schizophrenia and mania.
  • Mood stabilizers, which treat bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder.
  • Anxiolytics, which treat anxiety disorders.
  • Depressants, which are used as hypnotics, sedatives, and anesthetics.

Hallucinogens have been used in psychiatric medication in the past, and are currently being reevaluated for several uses.

Read more about this topic:  Psychiatric Medication

Famous quotes containing the word types:

    As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting—the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.
    Saul Bellow (b. 1915)

    ... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    He’s one of those know-it-all types that, if you flatter the wig off him, he chatter like a goony bird at mating time.
    —Michael Blankfort. Lewis Milestone. Johnson (Reginald Gardner)