Better Than Prozac: Creating the Next Generation of Psychiatric Drugs

In this readable, upbeat treatise, Barondes, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology, reviews how the advent of powerful and versatile psychiatric drugs has revolutionized both the treatment and the understanding of mental illness, and assesses the prospects for further advances. Covering all the major categories of psychoactive drugs, Barondes charts the (usually serendipitous) discovery of blockbusters like Thorazine, Prozac, Valium, Benzedrine and Ritalin and their unanticipated effects (and side-effects) in treating schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and a host of other disorders. He shows how the success of these drugs has helped uncover the neurological mechanisms underlying psychiatric illness and all but obliterated the old conceptual divide between the physical and the psychological. Barondes is an engaging guide to the new biological paradigm of psychiatry. He gives lay readers a lucid introduction to such topics as the role of neurotransmitters, the psychological similarities of mice and men, and advances in genetics and neurology that promise better, precisely tailored drugs and new treatments for neural disorders like Alzheimer's and narcolepsy. He touches on some of the controversies surrounding psychopharmacology--the large placebo effect, possibly murderous""idiosyncratic responses"" of patients to drugs, the over-use of Ritalin and amphetamines for ADHD kids and the marketing of drugs for such mild conditions as""social phobia"" (i.e., shyness)--but he has a generally sanguine view of these drugs and their wide application.