On March 12, 2009, the Society for Medicines Research held a 1-day meeting entitled Current and Future Perspectives in Psychiatric Drug Discovery at GlaxoSmithKline, Harlow, U.K. The meeting, organized by Wendy Alderton, Eric Karran and Simon Ward, brought together experts from industry and academia to review the current challenges in the treatment of depression, schizophrenia and addiction. Recent advances in the development of novel agents for the treatment of these diseases were also presented.