3 ms·

Identification of risk loci with effects on five psychiatric disorders

1 points by carbocation 14y ago

lutusp 14y ago
A quote: "These results provide evidence relevant to the goal of moving beyond descriptive syndromes in psychiatry, and towards a nosology informed by disease cause." Translation: "Psychologists and psychiatrists can't either identify or treat the majority of 'mental' illnesses -- for that, we need to locate the actual causes, most of which are genetic." NIMH director Thomas Insel made the same point in his 2010 Scientific American article "Faulty Circuits": http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circuits http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circ... A quote: "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient’s illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely “mental,” and psychological therapies followed suit. Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses." More detail here: http://arachnoid.com/building_science http://arachnoid.com/building_science
- carbocation 14y ago
  > Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses. Yes, I agree. My general sense is that when we start to figure out the basis for psychiatric diseases, those get moved into neurology's domain. I was looking at a psychiatry textbook and I was surprised to see Rett syndrome (a pervasive developmental disorder) listed as a psychiatric disease. It turns out that the textbook was quite old, and it wasn't up to date with the latest information about this disorder, whose cause is now known (MECP2 mutations, mostly).

1 points by carbocation 14y ago

A quote: "These results provide evidence relevant to the goal of moving beyond descriptive syndromes in psychiatry, and towards a nosology informed by disease cause." Translation: "Psychologists and psychiatrists can't either identify or treat the majority of 'mental' illnesses -- for that, we need to locate the actual causes, most of which are genetic." NIMH director Thomas Insel made the same point in his 2010 Scientific American article "Faulty Circuits": http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circuits http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circ... A quote: "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient’s illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely “mental,” and psychological therapies followed suit. Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses." More detail here: http://arachnoid.com/building_science http://arachnoid.com/building_science

carbocation 14y ago
> Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses. Yes, I agree. My general sense is that when we start to figure out the basis for psychiatric diseases, those get moved into neurology's domain. I was looking at a psychiatry textbook and I was surprised to see Rett syndrome (a pervasive developmental disorder) listed as a psychiatric disease. It turns out that the textbook was quite old, and it wasn't up to date with the latest information about this disorder, whose cause is now known (MECP2 mutations, mostly).