Explain the agonist-to-antagonist spectrum of action of psychopharmacologic agents, including how partial and inverse agonist functionality may impact the efficacy of psychopharmacologic treatments.

Drugs have 2 properties which include their affinity and intrinsic efficacy. “Affinity is the

property of a drug that describes its ability to bind to a receptor. “Intrinsic efficacy is the drug

property that describes the effect a drug has on receptor activity that can lead to a change in

cellular activity” (Berry&Clarke, 2018). Affinity and intrinsic efficacy always remain the same and

are unique for each drug-receptor pair because it is determined by the structure of the receptor

and the drug.

Agonists are drugs that attach to the target receptor and by doing so they alter the receptor and

a response is produced. Antagonists are the opposite in that no response is produced after

attaching to the receptor. A full agonist will create the highest response it is capable of, while a

partial agonist only produces a partial or a fraction of the response. So a partial agonist can be

both agonist and antagonist because other molecules are unable to bind producing minimal

activity (Berry &Clarke, 2018)

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