Tranquilizers - Anxiety, Acute Anxiety, Chronic Anxiety, Treatment For Anxiety, Benzodiazepines, Action, Choice Of Tranquilizers
agents major illness sedatives
The medical use of drugs to reduce or relieve anxiety has given rise to a group of medications called an tianxiety agents. These agents include anxiolytics, tranquilizers, and sedatives.
Tranquilizers were formerly grouped as either "minor" tranquilizers or "major" tranquilizers. The word major stands for "major psychiatric illness," not heavily sedating or tranquilizing. Today, major tranquilizers are more often referred to as neuroleptics or antipsychotic agents and they are used in the treatment of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar illness. Examples of antipsychotic agents are chlorpromazine (Thorazine), synthesized in France in 1950, and the phenothiazines.
Presently, the common use of the term tranquilizer refers to the "minor" tranquilizers mainly of the benzodiazepine family. This newer group of anti-anxiety agents has tended to replace the use of barbiturates and meprobamate and certain antihistamines which were used as sedatives and anti-anxiety agents. It is these drugs that are prescribed as tranquilizers in the non-psychiatric setting of general medicine which treats anxiety brought on by stress rather than some disorder in the central nervous system.
Additional Topics
While anxiety is usually an accompanying state of mind of most psychiatric disorders, it is also a special disorder of its own. Anxiety disorder or reaction is characterized by a chronic state of anxiety that does not have an immediate or visible basis. That is, the individual feels alarmed or uneasy but cannot point to any outside or realistic basis for the fear. There is a general state of uneas…
Acute anxiety panic attacks have been described as one of the most painful of life experiences. The condition can last for a few minutes to one or two hours. The individual is cast into a state of terror by some nameless imminent catastrophe. All rational thought processes cease during this time. There are a number of cardiovascular responses to this state such as palpitations, tachycardia (elevat…
There are about 20 tranquilizers in the benzodiazepine family of tranquilizers. Some of the popular ones are diazepam (Valium), Fluorazepam (Dalmane), oxazepam (Serax), and chlordiazepoxide (Librium). In addition to being prescribed for anxiety, they are also used as muscle relaxants, sedatives, anesthetics, and as supportive medication for withdrawal from alcohol. These drugs were introduced in t…
Tranquilizers act as anti-anxiety agents by depressing the central nervous system without leading to sedation. Barbiturates are seldom used now for managing anxiety or dysphoria because of their addictive potential. The molecules of barbiturate drugs pass through the membranes of the cells in the brain. They are then able to block nerve signals that pass from cell to cell, thus inhibiting the stim…
Tranquilizers are the most commonly used prescription drugs in the United States. The three major groups of tranquilizers are the benzodiazepines with the brand names of Valium, Librium, and Alprazolam. The second major group are the dephenylmethanes prescribed under the brand names of Vistaril and Atarax. The third group are the older alcohol-like propanediols that came out in the 1950s, such as …
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