Novel targets for drug treatment in psychiatry

Abstract

Epidemiological studies of mental disorders show that roughly half of the population in the USA meets criteria for one or more of such disorders in their lifetimes, and nearly a quarter in a given year has a psychiatric disorder. Most of the first psychiatric medications, including antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs, were serendipitously discovered, and their molecular and cellular mechanisms of action are just starting to be explored. At present, only a handful of neurotransmitter systems are actually targeted by therapeutic drugs, which represents a major bottleneck that hampers the development of new central nervous system-active drugs. In this chapter, we review some of the recent advances in understanding the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, current work on the basic and clinical aspects of drugs used for their treatment, and major concepts related to new targets in molecular psychiatry research.