Haloperidol is a type of antipsychotic drug that is commonly used in medicine. It is one of the first drugs that began to be used to treat mental illnesses. We are going to know better what it is, what applications it has and its importance in the field of mental disorders.
Haloperidol is a typical conventional antipsychotic drug, which is known as a neuroleptic. This medicine is part of the butyrophenones, a chemical group of substances used to deal with psychopathic behaviors.
It is, therefore, a key drug in the treatment of mental illnesses, as well as being one of the first to be applied for this purpose. It was discovered by Dr. Janssen in the middle of the 20th century, within the Janssen Pharmaceutica laboratories.
And it is that psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia are diseases with which a large number of people live. In addition to the suffering they cause in themselves, they are also a source of pain for those around them.
Some of them can represent a danger, so it is essential to apply a treatment of this type to control the functioning of your brain. That is why since the beginning of the century a lot was studied in this regard, until finding this drug that, to this day, continues to be one of the most important that exists..
That same year, in Belgium, the first clinical trials were presented. From the first moment it proved to be a very suitable drug to treat some mental illnesses.
The way haloperidol works is as follows: this drug acts as a blocker of the dopamine receptors that we have in the brain. What dopamine does is increase its activity in the brain of people with psychotic disorders.
Psychotic disorders are defined as mental illnesses that cause the brain to not distinguish well between real and imaginary ideas. When this drug is administered, these receptors are blocked.
It is considered one of the most used neuroleptics, with an average consumption of doses between 6 and 9 mg per day. At the level of how the metabolism assimilates it, it is a drug that is metabolized in the liver.
Haloperidol, as we have discussed previously, is a drug that is prescribed to patients who show psychotic disorders. One of these diseases is schizophrenia, a very difficult disease to treat.
Schizophrenia is one of the most serious mental illnesses that exists. This affects basic brain functions, such as thinking and the perception of reality..
This causes emotions to be produced in the affected person that he may not be able to control and leads him to carry out behaviors that can cause harm to him and his environment. Patients with this type of disorder completely lose their sense of reality and contact with it.
However, with haloperidol it is possible to regulate this chronic mental disorder, one of the most serious that exists, and to control in a certain way the abnormal behaviors that it produces. In this way, it is possible to keep under control and avoid the altered perception of reality in patients.
In addition to treating schizophrenia, haloperidol is used in other acute psychotic states as well. It is also indicated in states of psychomotor agitation, manic states, panic disorders, anxiety, and even to help control stuttering.
Haloperidol is also used to control motor tics and also verbal tics (hence it is used for problems like stuttering). In addition, it can be used in both adults and children with Tourette syndrome. This is a disease characterized by the presence of motor or verbal tics.
Despite the good results that this medicine has given, there are also some contraindications. This is common in the field of antipsychotics in general, as they often present adverse side effects.
Some of the contraindications are that, by blocking dopamine receptors, motor disorders such as tremor at rest and a stiffness typical of Parkinson's can occur. This is something that must be valued and that must be monitored especially.
Another adverse effect that is contemplated by the consumption of this drug is that it produces severe drowsiness. They are drugs that affect the normal functioning of the brain, with which this type of side effects is very common.
Anyway, as you may have seen, haloperidol is a very common and well-known drug in the field of mental medicine. Its application allows a person who has a mental illness to see their quality of life significantly improved.
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