A psychiatric or psychotropic medication is a psychoactive drug taken to exert an effect on the chemical makeup of the brain and nervous system. Thus, these medications are used to treat mental illnesses. These medications are typically made of synthetic chemical compounds and are usually prescribed in psychiatric settings, potentially involuntarily during commitment. Since the mid-20th century, such medications have been leading treatments for a broad range of mental disorders and have decreased the need for long-term hospitalization, thereby lowering the cost of mental health care. The recidivism or rehospitalization of the mentally ill is at a high rate in many countries, and the reasons for the relapses are under research.
David HealyFRCPsych, a professor of psychiatry at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, is a psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist and author. His main areas of research are the contribution of antidepressants to suicide, conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and academic medicine, and the history of pharmacology. Healy has written more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, 200 other articles, and 20 books, including The Antidepressant Era, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1–3, Let Them Eat Prozac and Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder.
Biological psychiatry or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system. It is interdisciplinary in its approach and draws on sciences such as neuroscience, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, genetics, epigenetics and physiology to investigate the biological bases of behavior and psychopathology. Biopsychiatry is the branch of medicine which deals with the study of the biological function of the nervous system in mental disorders.
Dan Joseph Stein is a South African psychiatrist who is a professor and Chair of the Dept of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, and Director of the South African MRC Unit on Risk & Resilience in Mental Disorders. Stein was the Director of UCT's early Brain and Behaviour Initiative, and was the inaugural Scientific Director of UCT's later Neuroscience Institute. He has also been a visiting professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in the United States.
Mogens Schou was a Danish psychiatrist whose research into lithium led to its utilization as a treatment for bipolar disorder.
Dennis S. Charney is an American biological psychiatrist and researcher, with expertise in the neurobiology and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. He is the author of Neurobiology of Mental Illness, The Physician's Guide to Depression and Bipolar Disorders and Molecular Biology for the Clinician, as well as the author of over 600 original papers and chapters. In 2022, he was listed #52 on Research.com's "Top Medicine Scientists in the United States," with an h-index of 194 with 146,109 citations across 651 publications. Charney is known for demonstrating that ketamine is effective for treating depression. Ketamine's use as a rapidly-acting anti-depressant is recognized as a breakthrough treatment in mental illness.
Philip Manley Boyce is an Australian psychiatrist. He is a professor of psychiatry and head of discipline of psychiatry at the University of Sydney, and head of Perinatal Psychiatry Clinical Research Unit at Westmead Hospital. He has published more than 170 articles, and frequently contributes to psychiatric textbooks. He currently serves as associate editor of Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. He has a long clinical and research interest in anxiety disorders, mood disorders, psychosomatic disorders, and perinatal psychiatry. He has also taken leadership roles in the profession as president of the RANZCP and the international Marcé society, in the development of clinical practice guidelines, and in the development of a competency-based training program for the college.
Jules Angst is a Swiss academic who is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Zurich University in Zurich, Switzerland, and Honorary Doctor of Heidelberg University in Heidelberg, Germany.
Cyclothymia, also known as cyclothymic disorder, psychothemia / psychothymia, bipolar III, affective personality disorder and cyclothymic personality disorder, is a mental and behavioural disorder that involves numerous periods of symptoms of depression and periods of symptoms of elevated mood. These symptoms, however, are not sufficient to indicate a major depressive episode or a manic episode. Symptoms must last for more than one year in children and two years in adults.
Allen J. Frances is an American psychiatrist. He is currently Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. He is best known for serving as chair of the American Psychiatric Association task force overseeing the development and revision of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). Frances is the founding editor of two well-known psychiatric journals: the Journal of Personality Disorders and the Journal of Psychiatric Practice.
David L. Dunner is a psychiatrist in Washington, United States, who has conducted pioneering research into mood disorders, anxiety disorders and their treatment. He has authored or co-authored more than 250 articles and more than 10 books.
Eduard Vieta Pascual is a Spanish psychiatrist and a leading scientific authority on the neurobiology and treatment of bipolar disorder.
Augustus John Rush is an internationally renowned psychiatrist. He is a professor emeritus in Duke-NUS Medical School at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. He has authored and edited more than 10 books, and over 600 scientific journal articles that are largely focused on the diagnosis and treatment of depressive and bipolar disorders.
Hilary Patricia Blumberg is a medical doctor and the inaugural John and Hope Furth Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. She is also a professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, and works in the Child Study Center at Yale where she has been a faculty member since 1998. She attended Harvard University as an undergraduate, and completed medical school at Cornell University Medical College (1990). She completed her medical internship and psychiatry residency at Cornell University Medical College/New York Hospital, and her neuroimaging fellowship training at Cornell University, Weill Medical College. She has received the 2006 National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) and the Gerald L. Klerman Award for Clinical Research. Blumberg has authored a number of scientific articles that focus on bipolar disorder, neuroimaging, and effects of specific genetic variations, developmental trajectories and structure-function relationships.
Hans-Ulrich Wittchen is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and epidemiologist. He has been a head of the Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy and the Center of Clinical Epidemiology and Longitudinal Studies (CELOS) at the Technische Universität Dresden. Since 2018, he is leading the research group "Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Research" at the Psychiatric Clinic of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and directs the IAP-TU Dresden GmbH in Dresden.
Ellen Frank is a psychologist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. She is known in the field of Psychotherapy as one of the developers of Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy, which aims to treat bipolar disorder by correcting disruptions in the circadian rhythm while promoting increased regularity of daily social routines. Frank is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of HealthRhythms, a company that uses mobile technology to monitor the health and mental health of clients, facilitate the detection of changes in their status, and better manage mental health conditions.
Prof. Robert Haim Belmaker, is an Israeli psychiatrist who has had major academic positions in Israeli psychiatry since 1974. He had a formative influence on biological directions in Israeli psychiatry. He was Hoffer-Vickar Professor of Psychiatry at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheva Israel until his retirement and is now Emeritus.
Joseph Thomas Coyle Jr. is an American psychiatrist and neuroscientist that is known for his work on the neurobiology of mental illness, more specifically on schizophrenia. He is currently the Eben S. Draper Chair of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He was President of the Society of Neuroscience from 1991–1992, and also the president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 2001. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine.
Susan Lynn McElroy is Chief Research Officer at Lindner Center of HOPE.
Chantal Martin Soelch is a Swiss clinical psychologist, academic, and author. She is a Professor in Clinical and Health Psychology, and Vice-rector for Teaching, Continuing Education, Gender Equality, and Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).
