Mental illness reserpine

Reserpine and the MAO inhibitors thus afforded the medical breakthrough to the chemical treatment of mental illness and established a rational basis for synthetic drug design of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs. New types of biochemical and pharmacological screening procedures were developed as a result of Brodie s work, and the 1960 s were to become the era of the biogenic amines. 

The drug company. Smith Kline French, first marketed chlorpromazine as a treatment for vomiting. Clinical trials in patients with mental illness were then conducted in state mental hospitals by Pierre Deniker who obtained miraculous results. In 1954, two years after chlorpromazine, reserpine was introduced into dinical practice. 

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