1 INTRODUCTION

Psychopharmacology can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Unlike other fields of medicine like cardiology or endocrinology, which tend to involve processes that are easily visualized and follow a logical order, the concepts in psychopharmacology can seem random, illogical, and abstract. This can lead to frustration or boredom on the part of the learner.

This book aims to correct that. It pursues the goal of making the information stick with reckless abandon. It is shameless in its use of mnemonics and other memory aids. It wants to, and believes it can, make studying psychopharmacology fun. This approach should make the book helpful to healthcare providers from various disciplines and at various stages of training (including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, physician assistants, social workers, and others), although it has been tailored most specifically for medical students in their preclinical and clinical years. The only prerequisites are a basic knowledge of physiology (including organ systems and cell biology), neurology (such as action potentials, synapses, and the autonomic nervous system), and pharmacology (agonists, antagonists, half-lives, and the like).

We’ll begin with a quick overview of neurotransmitters. From there, we will go over the prescription medications used to treat common mental illnesses such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. We will