The advent of psychotropic drugs is perhaps the most important event in the history of psychiatry. Introduction of chlorpromazine in 1954, must be considered a landmark. Since then a large number of drugs have been introduced in quick succession. This has created a major problem for the General Practitioner and even Clinical Psychiatrists, making it difficult for them to assimilate and then differentiate the properties of one drug from another (Imlah 1982). This has led to indiscriminate and excessive use of psychoactive drugs which has been widely criticized in recent years. For the purpose of description, psychotropic drugs can be divided into antischizophrenic drugs, antimanic drugs, antidepressants and anxiolytics. Various drugs which fall into these categories are described and their effectiveness and side effects are evaluated.