Neuropsychopharmacology was first published 21 years ago. The early issues are filled with work from past, present, and future thought leaders in the field. The similarities between the articles that were published in 1988 and those being published today are striking. This is a testament to the foresight of those researchers who were the first to work at the interface of the central nervous system (neuro), the mind (psycho), and drugs (pharmacology).

There was great emphasis on schizophrenia in the earliest issues of the journal. At the time, it was becoming clear that new drugs (eg, clozapine) had major advantages over classic drugs (eg, haloperidol). There was enthusiasm for the idea that the increased safety and efficacy of drugs such as clozapine had much to teach us, and that an improved understanding of how these drugs worked would enable new insights into the pathophysiology of the disorder (Meltzer, 1988). In parallel, advances in molecular biology and molecular pharmacology offered an improved ability to identify and catalog the many receptor targets of psychiatric medications, as well as the opportunity to use multidisciplinary approaches to tease out the substrates of desirable and undesirable drug effects.

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