Psychoactive medications Flashcards
What is ultimate behaviour/ emotionality a product of?
personality traits and learning from life experiences
What is a normal emotional state?
- well-adapted
- good emotional homeostasis
What is an abnormal emotional state?
- poorly adapted
- poor emotional homeostasis
What might life events be?
- experiences of threat/fear
- situations of emotional conflict or frustration
- conditioned contextual associations with anziety
What does an event in an animal’s life cause?
additive effect of arousal and emotional responses –> animal emotional state becomes closer to the threshold
What are long term psychoactive drugs used for?
improves response to an event
WHat are short term psychoactive drugs used for?
to suppress memory of an event
Aims of psychoactive drugs
- reduce general anxiety
- reduce situational anxiety
- reduce fearfulness
- suppress memory of events
- changes only happen as a result of experience and medication
Why use psychoactive drugs?
- specific drug indication (separation anxiety)
- if emotion is so intense that it is interfering with therapy (intense anxiety/fear, phobia and risk to animal/ person/ property)
- animal’s suffering or distress could be alleviated with drug therapy
- if prognosis can be improved or improvement speeded up
3 phases of psychoactive drug therapy
- initiation
- maintenance
- withdrawal
What is initiation?
- first stage of psychoactive drug tx
- risk of adverse effects (may predispose aggression)
- changed emotionality (may make behaviour unpredictable, increased confidence/ disinhibition)
- delay in onset of main effects (can take 4-8 weeks)
What is maintenance?
- 2nd stage of psychoactive drug tx
- treatment continued until:
- end of period for which drug is licensed
- there is a period of normal behavior
- there is an indication that emotional component is less significant and behavioural modification alone will be successful
What is drug withdrawal?
- 3rd and final phase of psychoactive medication
- no info on datasheets for this
- unpleasant side effects well known in man (discontinuation syndrome is common with TCA/ SRI/ SSRI) that have a short half-life = clomipramine
- potential for recidivism if drug withdrawn suddenly
Name a drug class that has recidivism
Benzodiazepines: 80% cats have recidivism
How long should you reduce a drug dose for before finally stopping tx?
- 6 month tx = 6 weeks withdrawal
- 8 months tx = 8 weeks withdrawal, this is maximum amount of time for withdrawal (i.e. tx for more months than 8 should also have a 8 week withdrawal)
What are hazards of using medication?
- adverse effects
- therapeutic failure
- disinhibition (especially benzodiazepines, also TCA, SRI, SSRI drugs and acepromazine)
- excessive confidence and assertiveness (selegiline)
- owner overdependence (where they prioritise drugs over behavioral tx)
Adverse effect - clomipramine
- sedation
Name 3 psychoactive drug classes
- serotonergic
- dopaminergic
- gaba-ergic
Outline serotonergic reuptake inhibitor (SRI) psychoactive drugs
In anxiety and depression synaptic serotonin i slow, and receptors and up-regulated.
- IMMEDIATE EFFECT: increase the number of activated receptors on dendrite post-synaptic membrane, increase serotonin concentration
- DELAYED EFFECT: decrease post-synaptic receptors and pre-synaptic receptors and increase serotonin concentration (which causes behavior changes)
- DRUG WITHDRAWAL: persistent increased synaptic serotonin suppresses receptor expression
Name 4 serotonergic drug examples
- amitriptyline
- clomipramine
- fluoxetine
- sertraline
Action - TCA/ SRI/ SSRI drugs
They not only alter serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake, they also antagonise a range of other receptors causing adverse effects (e.g. antagonism of H1, M1 and alpha 1)
What do most psychoactive drugs have a balance between?
SRI and NRI
What is NRI?
Noradrenaline Reuptake Inhibitor
