Psychotropic Medicine | Nursing Assignment

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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Introduction
Psychotropic drugs are being used for the treatment of mental disorders. Two main types
of psychotropic drugs have been introduced for the treatment –some antidepressants and some
antipsychotic drugs. They normally work by inhibiting the dopaminergic neurotransmission.
Psychotropic drugs have been widely used in the treatment of a large number of mental disorders
like Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective disorder, acute mania, major depressive disorders,
delusional disorders and severe agitation, Tourette disorder, dementia and delirium as well as
substance abused psychotic disorder. But antipsychotics have been associated with significant
extrapyramidal side effects. As per the studies nearly one half of the medication errors has been
associated with the writing and the dispensing of the prescriptions which indicates that the
prescribers can work for reducing the errors.
This paper will critically discus about the controversies related to the use of the
Psychotropic medicine in the patients having behavioral disorders. The various controversies like
the use of psychotropic medicine as chemical restraints or their rampant use by the college
students for improving their academic skills. The assignment will also identify the challenging
aspect of the registered nurses administering psychotropic drugs to customer posing risk to
psychotropic medicines.
The controversy of the use of psychotropic medications to control behaviors and manage
symptoms for people who experience mental illness

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While there had been a lot of controversies regarding the application of the physical
restraints for managing behavior in patients. Chemical restraints are often used for controlling
the behavior of patients with mental health illness. Forced administration of psychotropic
medicines against the will of the patient and involuntary confinement of the patient in seclusion
or isolation has been adopted to prevent the free movement of the patients (McLaughlin, Giacco
& Priebe, 2016). Greater reliance on the psychotropic medicines have been found to create
several social as well as ethical concerns. Some of the concerns associated to the risk of
pharmacological interventions, like the paradoxical findings that children who are depressed and
are under antidepressants might have an increased risk of suicidal behavior relative to those
receiving the placebo. Some of the serious adverse effects can be associated with atypical
antipsychotics.
Many of the medicines are epileptogenic. Some might cause prolongation of the OTc
interval, prolonged arterial and ventricular contraction ad some anomalies in the cardiac
contraction. Allergic dermatitis and photosensitivity are the other side effects that can occur due
to the administration of the psychotropic medicines like Chlorpromazine (Chokhawala &
Stevens, 2019). Chlorpromazine has also found to be associated with blue-grey coloration of the
skin and can also cause pigmentation in the lens and the cornea. Some of the psychotropic
medicines can also cause pigmentation in the retina (Procyshyn, Bezchlibnyk-Butler and Jeffries
(2019). Drugs like Clozapine can cause hypersalivation, tachycardia, hypotension, and
anticholinergic side effects. They have also been found to be an important reason of hypertension
(De Fazio et al., 2016). Some of the drugs have been found to be showing some neuroleptic

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malignant symptom, causing increased temperature, confusion, muscular rigidity and an elevated
level of white blood count.
New ethical issues have raised around the use of the psychotropic ( like stimulants) for
enhancing the mental performance of the healthy people.
There is a controversy regarding the use of psychotic medicines for the enhancement of
studies among the college students. Psychotropic drug misuse among the college students is
variable among those studying in colleges are quite unpredictable and variable. A rampant usage
of the drugs like medications, including stimulants, benzodiazepines, and antidepressants are
seen among the college students for a variety of reasons like the enhancement of concentration
and studies.
Misuse of the psychotropic drugs have been found to be common among the college
students. According to a study consisting of 14175 students, from various campuses have
reported that 14.7 % of the students taking psychotropic medicines do so without any proper and
valid prescriptions (bt Mamat et al., 2015). The medicines taken by the college students includes
stimulus, antidepressants and anxiolytics and antidepressants. In has been reported in another
study that more than one third of the responders have reported the misuse of the psychotropic
drugs.
As stated by CARLSONAN and CROSSI (2019), the number of children all over the
world taking these prescription drugs has grown over the years. The current trends in the use of
the psychotropic medications from a large population based studies have shown the use of
psychotropic medicines by the pediatrics and the adolescents. Drugs are being purchased to treat
varieties of mental health conditions like autism or Attention-deficit hypersensitivity disorder.