10 Truths & 10 Fallacies of Psychopharmacology

Separate scientific knowledge from marketing hype in psychiatry with Harvard lecturer Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, MD

Enroll in the 3-part Masterclass

What you get

3 live lecture sessions — Dr. Ghaemi's sneak-preview of the revised edition of his own psychopharmacology textbook, covering drug nomenclature, neurobiology, and molecular structure across the major drug classes.
Why the standard drug names are wrong. "Antidepressant," "antipsychotic," and "mood stabilizer" are marketing terms, not clinical ones — learn the mechanistic names and why the difference changes how you prescribe.
Structure-to-effect walkthroughs. See the actual molecular structures behind haloperidol, risperidone, clozapine, and the newer agents (cariprazine, lumateperone, brexpiprazole) — and why a one-atom change can mean the difference between metabolic syndrome and a clean side-effect profile.

Full recordings of all 3 sessions — lifetime access, watch anytime.

Course highlights you'll apply immediately

"SSRI" is mostly a myth: Of all the drugs called "selective," only citalopram actually is — the rest carry meaningful norepinephrine or dopamine effects most clinicians never learned.
Only 3 drugs cause metabolic syndrome, not the whole class: Clozapine, olanzapine, and quetiapine — that's it. The FDA's class-wide black box warning came from industry pressure, not evidence.
Lithium has no molecular "structure": It's an element, not a synthetic drug — and its second-messenger mechanism is why it has disease-modifying benefits almost no other psychiatric drug possesses.
1 in 4 patients gets this, on any dopamine blocker: Akathisia — not weight gain — is the single most common driver of the antipsychotic suicidality black-box warning.
More dose does not mean more effect: PET-scan data show most antipsychotics hit their dopamine-blockade ceiling well before the doses routinely prescribed.
Half of these drugs flagged carcinogenic in FDA animal studies: Information patients are entitled to have, even when it rarely changes the treatment decision.

AND MUCH MORE...

Who this is for

Psychiatrists and NPs who want to prescribe from mechanism and structure — not the marketing name on a drug label. If you've ever wondered why two drugs "in the same class" behave nothing alike in practice, this is where that gets explained.

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About Dr. Nassir Ghaemi

Nassir Ghaemi, MD MPH, is a psychiatrist and researcher specializing in depression and bipolar illness. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Clinical Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and teaches at the Cambridge Health Alliance.

Formerly employed at Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA, where he led clinical psychiatry research in early drug discovery. He is the author of numerous books, including the bestselling A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Mental Illness and Leadership, and, most recently, Clinical Psychopharmacology.

He runs a clinical education website, The Psychiatry Letter, with thousands of readers around the world. He has published over 300 scientific papers and serves on the editorial board of numerous journals.