Psychopharmacology Ethical Issues

Psychopharmacology is the scientific study of the effects that drugs have on mood, sensation, thinking, and behavior. Examples of these drugs include antipsychotics, antidepressants, and antianxiety medications. These drugs work by changing the chemistry in the body by altering hormones, neurotransmitters, or interactions between receptors. Modern drugs like antidepressants have been around since the 1960’s when the serotonin hypothesis was formed. Since this time, the ethical debate over psychopharmacology has been growing. Today, the debate focuses primarily on whether it is ethical to prescribe a patients a psychopharmaceutical who does not have a strict diagnosis of a mental disorder. Instead the patient is using the drug as a means of

To counter this claim, the author brings up the point of a medication that is used for dementia. Even people on the other side of this debate would agree that this drug should be given to someone who falls about 2 standard deviations away from what is considered normal. This same person would have to disapprove of giving the same drug to a patient that is only one and a half standard deviations away from normal. Why is it okay to give the drug to someone who is 2 deviations away, but not one and a half? This concept of what normal is that biostatics relies on is completely arbitrary. These arbitrary measurements are stopping people from receiving medicine that could potentially slow down the progression of a terrible disease, and even save their lives. This is because they are dependent on statistical categorization like age, gender, and ethnicity. It is too hard to give normal a statistical definition because there are so many variables that factor into a patient’s disease. What is considered normal for the human race is ever changing based on the environment, technology, and society that is all around us. Synofzik also brings up this startling point: “If legitimation of drug use is simply bound to

Everyday and everywhere people get plastic surgery or take oral contraceptives. We use caffeine to enhance ourselves. Plastic Surgery, oral contraceptives, and caffeine are all considered medicine. Yet, in many cases they are not used for treatment, but for enhancement. These practices do not relieve anyone of an illness, yet they are almost never argued over being ethical or not. They are almost universally accepted. So, why are some cases of using medicine for enhancement acceptable, but not all? Synofzik thinks that use of psychopharmaceuticals is ethical. He does not think that everyone should take them all the time. At the end of his article he makes the stipulation that there needs to be regulation of these drugs and should only be taken when recommended by a doctor. When recommending a psychopharmaceutical to be used it must be considered if the benefit outweighs the harm and whether or not the patient wants to take the drug. He states:” The real question is not whether enhancement should be legitimated or not, but under which circumstances and which role physicians should play” (Synofzik, 2009). He suggests that these drugs be regulated through laws and monitoring of doctors and patients, similar to how narcotic pain killers are