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In this title, Dr Karl Rickels provides a firsthand account of the development of the field of psychopharmacology. After growing up in Berlin and serving in Rommel's Africa Corps in World War II, Karl Rickels became a prisoner of war in May 1943. His experiences as a POW in America awakened his desire to return someday as an immigrant. After the war he completed medical school and postgraduate training in Germany. When a psychiatric residency position opened at a mental hospital in Iowa, Dr Rickels accepted the opportunity and immigrated to the United States. As a psychiatric resident in the mid-1950s, Dr Rickels soon became keenly aware of the ineffectiveness of psychiatric treatment at the time. In subsequent years, several drugs revolutionised the treatment of psychotic patients all over the world, replacing transorbital lobotomy, insulin shock, and to a large extent, electroshock therapy. Dr Rickels suddenly found himself at the forefront of an exciting new science-psychopharmacology.

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9781611370034

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Dr. Karl Rickels is the world's leading expert in the pharmacological treatment of anxiety disorders. He is the founder of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Section at the University of Pennsylvania. He was closely involved in the research and development of many anti-anxiety medications, including meprobamate, the benzodiazepines, and buspirone. This was followed by his discovery that antidepressant medications also had anti-anxiety properties, a finding that led to the current widespread use of antidepressants as anxiolytics. He also pioneered the scientific study of the benzodiazepines and their risks. Through his prolific research over the past fifty years, he has made so many contributions to the field that he is recognized the world over as the Dean of Psychopharmacology of anxiety disorders. As a testament to his extraordinary intellect, in his eighties he remains an active researcher, clinician, and teacher at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine.

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