REVIEW article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1549976
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Heterogeneity of Psychiatric Symptoms and DisordersView all 17 articles
Psychotherapy Research Domain Criteria: functional mechanisms of treatment and a basic theory of the mind
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Addictive Behaviour and Addiction Medicine and Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, LVR-Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
- 2AVS Social- and Health Center, Klagenfurt, Austria
- 3Department of Addictive Behaviour and Addiction Medicine and Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, LVR Hospital Essen, Essen, Germany
- 4Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatic Medicine, Evangelisches Krankenhaus Castrop-Rauxel, Academic Teaching Hospital of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
- 5Center for Translational Neuro- and Behavioural Sciences (CTNBS), University Hospital Essen, Hufelandstrasse 55, Essen, Germany
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The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach is a tipping point in psychotherapy and introduces a new development in the treatment of mental disorders. The linking of clinical syndromes with their biological foundation shifts the emphasis of research and methodology on biology and increases the falsifiability of therapy schools, trends and paradigms in psychotherapy. Interventions are not any more exclusively assessed according to their efficacy, but focus on biological mechanisms and aim at their alteration in an evidence-based way. At the same time, research benefits from the clinical expertise of experienced practitioners and proven treatment concepts. In this heterogeneity and with the decline of diagnosis-specific treatment, a vacuum occurs with respect to a basic theory on the functionality of the mind and the central approach for treatment. The mind could be assessed precisely by biological-based functional mechanisms. Needs could be moved into the center of treatment and their neural mechanisms, which overlap with addiction and reward processing, are the interface between universally valid or nomothetic processes and an individualized idiographic treatment. The RDoC approach will prospectively lead to a huge integration of proven treatment concepts, to the development of innovative evidence-based interventions and a basic theory of the mind in the sense of a universally valid neuropsychotherapy. The rationale was to define a central approach to and a RDoC-perspective on psychotherapy.
Keywords: Research Domain Criteria, Principles of change, needs, cognitive bias, reappraisal
Received: 22 Dec 2024; Accepted: 09 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rohlfing, Pum, Bonnet, Koelkebeck and Scherbaum. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nico Rohlfing, Department of Addictive Behaviour and Addiction Medicine and Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, LVR-Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
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