There haven't been any major discovery in treatment of most mental illnesses for 30 years. Just new formulations of SSRI and antipsychotics. Once drug company's patent expires and drug goes generic, they need to get a new patentable formula to market ASAP. Abilify will go generic soon.

It seems the only research taking place is creating new drugs to treat the symptoms. Nobody is looking for a cure because nobody really knows about brain chemistry and what causes imbalance.

If scientists only focused on treating symptoms in cancer, diabetes or heart disease, they would never find a cure and people would continue to die. I guess mental illness is less common (maybe 10%) compared to 50% for heart disease. So we don't have much of a voice in what researchers choose to spend time and money.

I do not believe doctors benefit directly from the drugs they prescribe. But the majority of psychiatrists don't even do psychotherapy or know how to do it. They leave that to psychologists and social workers. They see patients for 15 minutes and write prescriptions all day long.