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The British Journal of Psychiatry (1969) 115: 281-285. doi: 10.1192/bjp.115.520.281
© 1969 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
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The Use of Imipramine ("Tofranil") and Other Psychotropic Drugs in Organic Emotionalism

IAN R. LAWSON M.D. M.R.C.P.E. and ROBIN D. M. MacLEOD M.B., Ch.B., M.R.C.P.E.1

1 Senior Registrar, Geriatric Unit, Eastern General Hospital, Edinburgh

Organic emotionalism appears as inseparable from mood and sentiment as normal emotion, and however transiently felt usually goes with a sense of sadness or with obvious sentiment. How pervasive the latter features were in these cases is debatable, but the condition was particularly responsive to "thymoleptic" drugs.

One may tentatively complete the pharmacological profile of the condition by saying that it did not respond in most cases to placebo, was not helped or made worse by phenobarbitone, and relieved only somewhat by a small dose of a phenothiazine (thioridazine) in two cases out of four.

A larger dose of the last drug might have been more effective although varying doses of other phenothiazines outwith the trial have not been any more impressive.

To attempt a close relating of this partial pharmacological dissection to any general concepts is probably futile; but to use the traditional phrase of caution it is "not incompatible" with the delineation by Himwich (1965) of the levels of action of the various psychotropic drugs. For example, imipramine-like antidepressants stimulate the limbic structures but have no effect on the neo-cortex. On the other hand the clinical context of damaged cortico-infracortical relations may explain why a cortical depressant, phenobarbitone, made the situation worse in two cases.

Submitted on November 23, 1967




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Copyright © 1969 The Royal College of Psychiatrists.