Neuroscience in Psychiatry

Psychiatry is concerned with the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of complex brain disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, developmental disorders, and neurodegenerative disorders. Its primary mission is to prevent and relieve the distress and impairment caused by these disorders, which account for a significant portion of the global burden of illness-related disability. Clinical neuroscience underpins psychiatry. Its core mission is best served in this context, now and in the future, because advances in the assessment, treatment, and prevention of brain disorders are likely to stem from aetiology and pathophysiology studies based in clinical and translational neuroscience. To maintain its broad public health relevance in the future, psychiatry must also bridge science and service, ensuring that those who benefit from its science are also beneficiaries. To do so effectively, psychiatry as a clinical neuroscience discipline must strengthen its collaborations with public health, community and behavioural health science, and health economics.

These strategies include new approaches to strengthening the relationship between psychiatry and neurology, funding psychiatry's mission, emphasising early and sustained multidisciplinary training (research and clinical), strengthening academic infrastructure, and reorganising and refining mental health services for both preventive intervention and cost-effective chronic disease management.