This retreat from intimacy leaves the person lonely and isolated. This dilemma often becomes the nurse's dilemma. The nurse wishes to form a productive emotional bond but at the same time seeks to lessen the client's anxiety. For the schizophrenic person, moves toward emotional closeness will eventually increase anxiety. The dopamine theory of schizophrenia is based on the action of the neuroleptic drugs, better known as antipsychotic drugs.
Neuroleptics are the drugs of choice for treating the symptoms of schizophrenia.
The neuroleptics are believed to block the dopamine receptors in the brain, limiting the activity of dopamine and reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia. Amphetamines, just the opposite, enhance dopamine transmission. Amphetamines produce an excess of dopamine in the brain and can provoke the symptoms of schizophrenia in a schizophrenic client. In large doses, amphetamines can simulate symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia in a nonschizophrenic person. Some symptoms of schizophrenia are due basically to hyperdopaminergic activity.