Biological Treatments

  1. Pharmacotherapy is therapy using pharmaceutical drugs.
  2. An anxiolytic is a medication or other intervention that inhibits anxiety.
  3. Advertisement for Thorazine (chlorpromazine) from the 1950s, reflecting the perceptions of psychosis, including the now-discredited perception of a tendency towards violence, from the time when antipsychotics were discovered

    Blister pack of Prozac (fluoxetine), a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.

  4. An antidepressant is a drug used for the treatment of major depressive disorder and other conditions.
  5. A mood stabilizer is a psychiatric medication used to treat mood disorders characterized by intense and sustained mood shifts, typically bipolar disorder.
  6. Advertisement for Thorazine (chlorpromazine) from the 1950s, reflecting the perceptions of psychosis, including the now-discredited perception of a tendency towards violence, from the time when antipsychotics were discovered

    Olanzapine, an example of a second-generation antipsychotic.

  7. Antipsychotics are a class of psychiatric medication primarily used to manage psychosis, in particular in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and are increasingly being used in the management of non-psychotic disorders.
  8. Psychostimulants are psychoactive drugs that induce temporary improvements in either mental or physical functions or both.
  9. ECT device produced by Siemens AG, and used at the Eg Asyl mental hospital in Kristiansand, Norway, from the 1960s to the 1980s.

    ECT device produced by Siemens AG, and used at the Eg Asyl mental hospital in Kristiansand, Norway, from the 1960s to the 1980s.

  10. Electroconvulsive therapy is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in patients to provide relief from psychiatric illnesses.
  11. Psychosurgery is the neurosurgical treatment of mental disorder, a controversial medical field.


The Integrated MCAT Course is a trademark of Wisebridge Learning Systems. Unless otherwise specified, the works of the Integrated Course are published under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike License. MCAT is a registered trademark of the Association of American Medical Colleges, which does not endorse the Integrated MCAT Course. The Integrated MCAT Course offers our customers no guarantees regarding eventual performance on the MCAT.