Back to the Future: On the Road Towards Precision Psychiatry

This Research Topic looks at the exciting new field of personalized medicine in psychiatry, Precision Psychiatry, in its entirety. Discussions may consider how its history led to its present, but will more crucially consider how the field may progress over the next decades. Specific focus to be placed on prediction and on neurobiologically orientated prediction and classification to a range of psychiatric disorders, as well as biomarkers and ‘omics’ technologies as a movement towards a more individualized and precise practice. The complex nature of psychiatric disorders can only be unveiled in an integrative, transdisciplinary research framework which involves several research approaches. The combination of biomarkers, including neurobiological and clinical biomarkers, in tandem with computational psychiatry and machine learning for predictive analytics will be a key element for moving this field forward. Is there hope that current research could lead to potential biomarkers for psychiatric disorders to determine the diagnosis and staging of a psychiatric disorder and prediction and follow up of clinical response to an intervention? Moving beyond sign or symptom-based categories, which are agnostic about pathophysiology, this Research Topic aims to instigate discussion by obtaining perspectives and opinions of key leaders in the emerging field of Precision Psychiatry, welcoming debate regarding the direction the discipline should strive to pursue.

Keywords: Precision Psychiatry, Biomarkers, Predictive Analytics, Precision Medicine, Personalized Medicine

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