A Short History of the Field of Psychopharmacology and Its Effects on Psychopharmacology Practice

This article presents an overview of the history of psychopharmacology. We speculate on its future develop-ment as it bears on psychiatric prac-tice. To do this, we first describe chron-ologically a history of the reactions to and treatments of the "mentally ill" over time, followed by a short history of groundbreaking developments and advances in clinical medicine. We then examine treatment practices and mod -els of drug development from the past, which provide the foundation for the development of modern psychophar-macology practice.