Applied Psychopharmacology

Paper 3 Requirements

Your final paper will be an exercise in creativity. You will need to create a hypothetical drug that does not yet exist. Below are suggested steps to identifying what drug you should create.

1) Identify a disease or disorder that does not have an adequate pharmaceutical treatment. It may be that no drugs exist to treat this condition or that the drugs are not maximally effective or that they have too many side effects.

2) Identify what drug you think would adequately treat the condition. You’ll need to specify what mechanism of action it would have and why you are targeting that neurotransmitter/receptor (there should be a rationale for choosing the neurotransmitter/receptor and not a random guess).

3) Identify the route by which the drug should be taken.

4) Attempt to approximate what pharmacological effects (behavioral or physiological) it would have. What benefits are patients likely to see? What side effects are they likely to see? Why do you predict these benefits/side effects?

5) Identify any predicted drug interactions that patients should be aware of.

You should use what you know about other drug classes, effects of individual drugs, effects of different target neurotransmitters/receptors, and symptoms of your chosen condition to provide the reasons for creating this drug and why you expect the predicted outcomes.

The paper format should follow APA guidelines. The paper length minimum is 2 pages (1” margins, 12-pt font, Times New Roman). You are welcome to use more pages if you need more space. There is no minimum or maximum number of sources cited. It is unlikely, however, that you will find all of this information from one source. Also, your sources do not have to be peer-reviewed sources. However, they should be trusted sources (not Wikipedia, etc.).

Papers will be accepted late with a late penalty of 10% per week (1 day late through 6 days late = 5 points off; 7 days late through 13 days late = 10 points off, etc.).