Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness characterized by constant incidence and prevalence in the general population. The most important patophisiological mechanism for developing schizophrenia and other psychoses is a disfunction in neurotransmission, most importantly dysfunctional dopamine neurotransmission, which is responsible for the typical psychotic symptoms. Antipsychotics work primarily by blocking dopamine receptors, which attenuates psychotic symptoms and helps in establishing remission of the illness and the prevention of symptom relaps. There are a few classifications of antipsychotics and the one most commonly used is into two groups, typical and atypical, based on their receptor potential. Atypical antipsychotics block serotonin, histamine and adrenergic receptors in combination with dopamine receptors, which makes them easily tolerable for the patients due to significant decrease in the severity of their side effects in comparison to the typical ones. Moreover, atypical antipsychotics help improve cognitive and emotional disturbances which usually accompany typical symptoms of psychoses. This is why antipsychotics can be used for treatment of depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, OCD, dementia etc. It is important to be extremely cautious when administering antipsychotics to children, elderly, pregnant women or patients with severe physical disorders. With most of the above mentioned groups, significantly lower doses are needed to achieve the therapeutic effect. Antipsychotics are becoming more and more widely used which is why it is crucial to have knowledge of their mechanism of action and possible side effects.