Deciding when psychiatric medications or other types of treatments are indicated – and defining precise targets and goals of treatment – is perhaps the most fundamental of all undertakings in clinical psychiatry. As with all medical treatments, clinicians and patients should both have a clear and explicit understanding of what they expect medications, psychotherapy, or other interventions, to do. Medicines do not fix bad relationships or resolve existential dilemmas, but they can equip people with more intact capabilities to solve problems through better concentration and executive functioning, or improve someone’s capacity to negotiate stresses with less bias and influence from distorted beliefs or intense emotions. Pharmacotherapy is somewhat analogous to eyeglasses when it comes to driving a car; glasses do not confer driving skills but they can help minimize visual obstructions and improve how the brain processes information in ways that might otherwise prevent someone from making the fullest use of their knowledge about the rules of the road. Psychotherapy constitutes driving lessons.