Abstract

Drug discovery is at a near standstill for treating psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and common forms of autism. Despite high prevalence and unmet medical need, major pharmaceutical companies are deemphasizing or exiting psychiatry, thus removing significant capacity from efforts to discover new medicines. In this Commentary, I develop a view of what has gone wrong scientifically and ask what can be done to address this parlous situation.