The ataractic drugs: the present position of chlorpromazine, frenquel, pacatal, and reserpine in the psychiatric hospital.

The ataractic drugs are so called from their ability to produce ataraxy: freedom from confusion and anxiety. In a veterans psychiatric unit of 550 beds with a high rate of admissions and discharges, chlorpromazine and reserpine have been intensively studied during the past 2 years and since June 1955, Frenquel has been given to 130 patients, and Pacatal to over 250, in an effort to clarify the indications for these ataraxics in the treatment of acute and chronic psychoses. Our experiences with Frenquel are described in some detail as the originally hopeful and eventually disillusioning results obtained may explain many ambiguous findings in this complex field of research. Frenquel appears to have antihallucinatory and physically tonic effects in a small minority of regressed schizophrenics but to be of no value in the treatment of acute psychoses. Reserpine has also failed to fulfill earlier expectations. It is now reserved for the tranquillization of arteriosclerotics and as an adjuvant in the psychother...