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Biomedical subjects

H Scharbach

Publications and source records attributed to H Scharbach.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

[Cesium].

Cesium is an alkaline metal close to Rubidium, which is studied in psychopharmacology in the prospect of a possible antidepressive effect. It has stimulating properties of the motor activity on the animal, antagonizes some sedative substances but does not modify either self-stimulation behaviour or induced agressivity. Given in large doses, Cesium presents hypertensive effects bound with a stimulation of the adrenal Epinephrine secretion. As for the synapses Cesium increases the neuro-transmitter release. However the Norepinephrine turn-over is not modified in the central nervous system while that of Serotonin is increased as well as the cerebral concentrations of Tryptophan, Serotonin and 5.HIAA. These very fragmentary data about the toxico-pharmacological properties of Cesium, as well as the very prolonged half-life of this ion (from 50 to 100 days), explain that contrary to Rubidium it has not still been used in man.

Animals

[Mental complications of neuroleptic drugs. Confusional oneiric states].

The author reports five cases of relatively young women, in good general health, except that one of them had alcoholic liver disease, who presented a confusional state on taking neuroleptics: a widely used butyrophenone, prescribed for a psychotic condition. Owing to the low incidence of this side effect, these clinical cases were worth reporting. Furthermore, a trial of interpretation led us to believe that these reductions in consciousness were due to resistance to treatment.

Antipsychotic Agents

["Border-line states": psychodynamic and existential approach, apropos of 8 case reports].

This study attempts to determine the specific characteristics of this psychopathological concept, and demonstrate its operational interest. The traditional classification is clearly insufficient, and the clinical findings require metapsychological and existential references. The comprehensive approach to these morbid forms with polymorphic outlines, and variable symptoms, implies a deeper approach to the psychodynamic and structural planes. The experience of these subjects is characterised by sadness and lack of pleasure in life; they oscillate between a feeling of solitude, to which may be attached an anguish of separation and a flight from others when their relationship does not correspond to their special requirements and their modes of exchange with, in addition, an intrusion anxiety. Two references, one to Feeling alone by M. Klein and the other The ability to remain alone by D.W. Winnicott shed light on the psychogenetic basis and on the prevalence of phenomena of idealisation. The coexistence of sectors of mental function and defence mechanisms of different registers intervening together or alternately explain the "stability in instability". The existential continuum bears the traces of sudden ruptures. This paper includes the presentation of 8 cases.

Adolescent

[Beta blockers as psychotropic drugs].

The range of indications for beta blocking substances has extended to various fields of pathology : vascular system, endocrinology... The discovery of some of their side effects give good reasons to try to find out whether they should have a place in psychopharmacotherapy and wheter they could meet its present requirements. The initial target symptoms were anxiety--which, being polymorphous, can be, at various degrees, reactionnal to obviously stressing surroundings, but which is also implied by structural distortions of personality--and psychosomatic manifestations. If their site of actions was initially thought peripherical, it now seems that their action is also central, genuinely psychotropic, anxiolytic, and non sedative, psychoanaleptic and, at the same time, stimulating and increasing the level of attention (we have observed in some cases a reduction of sleep time)--thymoanaleptic, increasing the incitement to action. On the other hand, they quiet certain excitation states caused by appearence of badly controled anxieties. This study contains three series of experiments conceived with a similar methodology.

Adjustment Disorders

[Actual knowledge on beta blocking agents in psychiatry (author's transl)].

A new group of substances blocking central beta receptors, ie beta blocking agents among which oxprenol and pindolol, have been used in psychiatry, mainly in anxious or depressive-anxious patients. The anxiolytic effect, particularly on somatic anxiety, is interesting, and is present in double blind studies with benzodiazepines, where it is superior to these classical agents. The author has observed this therapeutic activity in series of one hundred patients and also a dynamising effect in some of these patients. Without having observed by himself and possibly because of the low doses experimented, the author states that these drugs have an antipsychotic activity.

Adrenergic beta-Antagonists