Article ID: CBB001221637

Intervention, Causal Reasoning, and the Neurobiology of Mental Disorders: Pharmacological Drugs as Experimental Instruments (2012)

unapi

In psychiatry, pharmacological drugs play an important experimental role in attempts to identify the neurobiological causes of mental disorders. Besides being developed in applied contexts as potential treatments for patients with mental disorders, pharmacological drugs play a crucial role in research contexts as experimental instruments that facilitate the formulation and revision of neurobiological theories of psychopathology. This paper examines the various epistemic functions that pharmacological drugs serve in the discovery, refinement, testing, and elaboration of neurobiological theories of mental disorders. I articulate this thesis with reference to the history of antipsychotic drugs and the evolution of the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia in the second half of the twentieth century. I argue that interventions with psychiatric patients through the medium of antipsychotic drugs provide researchers with information and evidence about the neurobiological causes of schizophrenia. This analysis highlights the importance of pharmacological drugs as research tools in the generation of psychiatric knowledge and the dynamic relationship between practical and theoretical contexts in psychiatry.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001221637/

Similar Citations

Book Danielle Giffort; (2020)
Acid Revival: The Psychedelic Renaissance and the Quest for Medical Legitimacy (/isis/citation/CBB791340763/)

Book Chiang, Howard Hsueh-Hao; (2014)
Psychiatry and Chinese History (/isis/citation/CBB001422492/)

Book Healy, David; (2002)
The Creation of Psychopharmacology (/isis/citation/CBB000201849/)

Article Horwitz, Allan V.; (2011)
Naming the Problem That Has No Name: Creating Targets for Standardized Drugs (/isis/citation/CBB001221532/)

Book Doyle, Richard; (2011)
Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noösphere (/isis/citation/CBB001250461/)

Thesis Lauren N. Haslem; (2017)
"Too Hot to Handle": LSD, Medical Activism, and the Spring Grove Studies (/isis/citation/CBB533172000/)

Thesis Metzl, Jonathan Michel; (2001)
The Freud of Prozac: Tracing psychotropic medications through American culture, 1955-2001 (/isis/citation/CBB001562624/)

Article Kauffman, George B.; Mayo, Isaac; Craig, G. Wayne; (2006)
LSD: Albert Hofmann's “Problem Child” (/isis/citation/CBB001252558/)

Article Schmied, Lori A.; Steinberg, Hannah; Sykes, Elizabeth A. B; (2006)
Psychopharmacology's Debt to Experimental Psychology (/isis/citation/CBB000770151/)

Book Dyck, Erika; (2008)
Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus (/isis/citation/CBB000850398/)

Article Ariel Gershon; Edward Shorter; (2019)
How amytal changed psychopharmacy: off-label uses of sodium amytal (1920–40) (/isis/citation/CBB367985449/)

Article Cutting, J.; (2015)
First Rank Symptoms of Schizophrenia: Their Nature and Origin (/isis/citation/CBB001551561/)

Article Winter, Alison; (2004)
Screening Selves: Sciences of Memory and Identity on Film, 1930--1960 (/isis/citation/CBB000501056/)

Article André Ariew; Yasha Rohwer; Collin Rice; (2017)
Galton, reversion and the quincunx: The rise of statistical explanation (/isis/citation/CBB685480860/)

Article Michael, Michael; (2008)
On the Validity of Freud's Dream Interpretations (/isis/citation/CBB000830437/)

Book Andrew Scull; (2019)
Psychiatry and Its Discontents (/isis/citation/CBB143831469/)

Authors & Contributors
Rice, Collin C.
Haslem, Lauren N.
Rohwer, Yasha
Gershon, Ariel
Marcacci, Flavia
Giffort, Danielle
Concepts
Psychotropic drugs
Psychopharmacology
Psychiatry
Mental disorders and diseases
Pharmacy
LSD (drug)
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
17th century
Places
United States
Germany
China
East Germany
Institutions
Purdue University (Lafayette, Indiana)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment