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I will not disagree that pharmacotherpay is a hugely useful and important aspect of the mental health industry. But I do sometimes wonder if, at this point, we are using a 'sledgehammer instead of a needle'. This is not to trivialise the overwhelming nature of mental illness, but I think that we may sometimes be using medications based on a very simple cause and effect principal. As ryan said " Pill X affects structure Y which is responsible for symptom Z". I'm not sure that the brain, as nuanced and complex as it is, can really handle this kind of treatment. There are so many variables. I think the issue is not pharmacotherapy per se, because as we have seen it can be immensely useful- especially in conjunction with talk therapy, but the lack of knowledge on the nuances of the brain. The saturating effects of drugs do not replicate the brain's natural functions and for that reason can have drastic side effects, sometimes worse than the original symptoms. If the drugs really did work all the time without any side effects perhaps pharmacology would not be such an issue. Time, research, trial and error- perhaps those things are MORE important and tenable than a complete re vamp of the medical industry.