Online Class Notes (Jesse) [W]

the monday after next

prepare an exam – prepare for an exam 

same – sayyym

the placebo effect 

Pharmacopsychology

Drugs act on the location of the disease. The psychological effects on patients may have a great or small impact on the therapeutic effectiveness of the drug. In order to achieve the best results, we need to study Pharmacopsychology.

Modern pharmacology believes that drugs have 2 mechanisms of effect with the first being a physiological effect, and the other being a psychological one. The physiological effect is that drugs cure patients by pharmacological action. The psychological effect is the way in which a drugs effectiveness is improved as a result of the patient feeling more positively after taking the drug which in turn accellerates the healing process. The psychological effect can promote the therapeutic effect, which is beneficial to the treatment.

The psychological effect of the drug is a combined effect which consists of the doctor’s presige, a patient’s sense of trust in the drug, the experience of taking the drug, what others say of the treatment, and the advertising message of the drug. Pharmacopsychology is a new marginal subject which is based on combination of pharmacology and psychology. It is a known phenomenon that drugs prescribed by famous doctors and professionals often have increased effectiveness when compared with drugs prescribed by their less well-known counterparts, which is a simple and obvious example of pharmacopsychology.

It has been said that “drugs are like seeds, and the psychological state is the soil in which the seeds grow, bloom and yield fruit”. The pharmacological effect is the basis of the treatment however, the psychological effect plays a key, but often overlooked role in the effect of the drug, especially when it comes to psychological and mental disorders. Therefore, good mental health and fortitude are clearly important for patients when undergoing treatment.

The drug prestige has the biggest impact on pharmacopsychology as pious belief and positive mood can affect the body’s physiological function and increase the secretion of adrenaline. A certain amount of adrenaline can assist in combating 200-400 times more deadly bacteria endotoxin. The greater the prestige of a drug, the deeper the belief a patient will hold in the ability of a drug to cure a disease.