The Science of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Pharmacology Thread

[beautiful_seclusion]

I hope this is ok to make this thread and in the right spot, if not let me know and I'll take it down. I've just noticed a handful of us on here really like discussing the science of mental illness and its treatments, and I feel sometimes my ranting nerd posts might be offputting in other threads. So I thought I'd make a thread just for discussing all the molecular science and physiology and other scientific parts of mental health and psychiatry/pharmacology/psychology. As well as things like interesting studies or articles or various theories on psychology, etc.

Not that you need to know the detailed sciences to post here or be going to school for it at all; I just thought it might be nice to have a place to post about detailed science stuff without feeling it was out of place and to find others with similar interests that are on here due to experience with mental health issues too. So basically just post anything about the science of mental health and keep debates civil.

*Note, even though things may be posted on here that are scientific and sound knowledgeable, they are not in any way meant to be taken as advice instead of your doctor or to affect your decisions on medications. Most of us on RYL either do not have a scientific/medical degree or are not finished with it, and even if we did, we're not your doctors and so cannot diagnose or medically advise you.

[Steel Maiden]

This is fantastic. I am reading about antianxiety medications in my Clinical Psychopharmacology textbook now. I'm also remembering a lecture I had (I study Pharmacology) at university about personalised medicine, and how that can be applied to psychiatry. I am wondering if, in the future, psychiatric drugs will be chosen for a person depending on his genetic make-up.

[beautiful_seclusion]

That would be very cool if medications were tailored to a person's genetic makeup. What type of developments for psychiatry and personalized medicine did the course talk about? I know that another interesting idea is to genetically encode a therapeutic substance to be produced by cells themselves. As in you engineer a cell produce a substance so that it can be possibly specific to certain types of cells and avoid side effects in other parts of the body. This is already done to label cells with fluorescent dyes and other markers to visualize cell activity, although not in humans.

I wonder though how we'll ever be able to break down how complex everything is. Something can be genetic, but even in cases where it's one gene affected (which is rare, usually it's multiple genes), it can be a gene that encodes for a transcription factor or something similar that affects hundreds to thousands of genes. So you can't cure it by simply trying to add the protein the lost gene encoded for, you'd have to replicate all its effects or somehow change the gene.

I do think the future in understanding physiology and genetics lies in computers being able to analyze molecular events in real time in a living organism without harming it. If something like that somehow were able to exist, I could imagine being able to scan through millions of possibilities and interactions and then data mining to come to a consensus on what factors a disease/aberration might be caused from.

[Steel Maiden]

The lecture was talking about the way that pharmacology and genomics could be linked together. It was a basic lecture (I'm only in my first year) but the lecturer did mention statin-induced myopathy and the selective action of herceptin only on people who have HER2 (breast cancer). He then went onto drugs being tailored to genetic variants such as in cytochrome P450 enzymes.

What you type sounds very interesting. Engineering cells like that would definitely treat a lot of illnesses that are currently difficult to treat.

Genetic manipulation and matching is a good way forward; I think research is pointing into this direction. As my lecturer called, "pharmacogenomics".

[beautiful_seclusion]

Yes I love genetics. I really like how it's so applicable to almost every biological science. My degree, which I finish in December 2012, is Genetics, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. Originally I majored in it for the cell biology, but now I'm so glad it had the genetic component. I'm going to get a graduate degree in neuroscience, and I've realized how applicable it is as both a research tool and just understanding neuroscience/neurobiology in general. I had a lab partner that was going into Evolutionary Biology, and he looked at a lot of genetic stuff too, which I never would've thought of. I guess it makes sense though since it is the basis for how all organisms function!

Don't got much to add right now, but thought I'd share this site. It gives summary updates of current research findings in neuroscience, psychiatry, etc. Unfortunately it doesn't provide the articles themselves (wouldn't that be amazing?) but you can look up the articles if you find the summary interesting as it lists the article at the end.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/mind_brain/