Psychotropic drugs: Past, present, future

Abstract

There is no doubt that the inventors of chlorpromazine in 1952 were not able to anticipate the permanent consequences of their enterprise. Besides triggering discoveries of the vast number of further psychotropic drugs, this landmark ushered in the new era of development of neuroscience on the whole. The current use of psychotropic drugs is huge, and accounts for about 20% of all prescriptions. However, the drug development in the past few decades did not add much to the clinical efficacy or safety of the originally introduced antipsychotics, antidepressants or anxiolytics, and some serious suspicions on the overall role of this class of drugs have appeared in the meantime. The future investigations should answer these questions, and also make it possible to clinically separate wanted from unwanted effects of psychotropic drugs.

Nesumnjivo, istraživači koji su 1952. uveli hlorpromazin u kliničku primenu nisu mogli da pretpostave kakav trajan uticaj će imati njihov poduhvat. Pored podstreka za otkriće velikog broja drugih psihofarmaka, ovaj događaj je bio prekretnica koja je neuronauku u celini uvela u novu eru razvoja. Sadašnja primena psihofarmaka je velika, i obuhvata oko 20% svih lekova izdatih na recept. Ipak, razvoj lekova u toku prethodnih nekoliko decenija nije doneo mnogo sa aspekta efikasnosti ili bezbednosti antipsihotika, antidepresiva ili anksiolitika, a u međuvremenu su se javile određene ozbiljne sumnje vezane za ukupnu ulogu ove klase lekova. Dalja istraživanja treba da odgovore na ta pitanja, ali i da učine ostvarljivim kliničko razdvajanje željenih od neželjenih efekata psihofarmaka.