A plea for symptom-based research in psychiatry.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The significant proportion of patients suffering from subthreshold diagnoses such as partial posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) shows that today's diagnostic entities do not fully meet the reality and needs of clinical practice. Moreover, as stated also in the recently announced concept of research domain criteria (RDoC), the use of today's traditional diagnostic systems in psychiatric research does not sufficiently promote an integrative understanding of mental disorders across multiple units of analysis from behavior to neurobiology. Besides RDoC, core symptom-based research concepts have been proposed to bridge the translational gap in psychiatry, but, unfortunately, have not yet become the rule.

Objective/method

First, this article briefly reviews literature

SUBMITTER: Schmidt U 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4439426 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature