Despite the significant advances experimented by neuroimaging, neurobiology and psychopharmacology in the last decades, the development of some areas of psychiatry seem to be more complex than the rest of medicine. Psychiatric diagnosis, psychotherapy and the delimitation of mental disorders from abnormal behaviours are difficult matters and should be improved by the integration of biological, psychosocial and philosophical knowledge. Psychopathology and biography are still fundamental tools for clinical and forensic psychiatry. However, the ethical problems of conflict of interests, confidentiality, public overexposure and reliable clinical research and publications seem to be the most important and urgent challenges of psychiatry in the next decades