Tranquilizers

Tranquilizers: Chemically Managing Anxiety and Mood

Tranquilizers are chemical compounds used in the treatment of stress and of mental illness ranging from mild to severe. Their overall pharmacological role is to relieve anxiety, stress, irritability or excitement, and to induce in the patient a general sense of well-being; because of this calming action, tranquilizers are also a component ingredient of many sleeping pills. Different tranquilizers achieve this outcome through genuinely different chemical mechanisms rather than a single shared one.

Antidepressants and noradrenaline. One well-understood mechanism concerns depression linked to a chemically low level of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, a compound associated with mood regulation. Antidepressant drugs counter this by inhibiting the enzymes responsible for degrading noradrenaline in the body. With its breakdown enzymes suppressed, noradrenaline persists in the body for longer, remaining available to keep activating its receptor and thereby counteracting the depressive effect caused by its earlier deficiency.

Barbiturates. A structurally important sleep-inducing (hypnotic) sub-class of tranquilizer is the barbiturates, which are chemical derivatives of barbituric acid. …