Life / Neuroscience & Psychology

Psychiatric drugs

Chlorpromazine, lithium and later antidepressants showed that chemistry can treat mental illness.

John Cade's lithium trials (1949) and the antipsychotic chlorpromazine (Delay and Deniker, 1952) made it possible to empty many psychiatric asylums. Antidepressants (1950s) and benzodiazepines followed, along with the 'chemical imbalance' idea, which later proved too simple. The drugs help many patients, but their targets were found largely by accident and few new drug classes have followed.