Is there only 1 neurobiologic psychiatric disorder, with different clinical expressions?
The nearly 1,000-page DSM-5 lists hundreds of psychiatric disorders, with an operational clinical process to distinguish them. Psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners dutifully apply DSM criteria to categorize patients as having a psychotic or mood or anxiety or addictive disorder; most rarely question the veracity of the diagnostic Bible of Psychiatry. But is that dogma about to be slaughtered by scientific research?
From a thick volume to… a booklet?
Can you envision a day when psychiatric disorders are conceptualized as having a common genetic, neurobiological, and clinical core, with some variability in phenotype and behavior? If further brain research steers psychiatric nosology in that direction, we might end up with a DSM of 10 pages instead of almost 1,000, with an “Appendix” of genetic, neuroimaging, and other emerging biomarkers.
Bold scientific prophecies often sound delusional—until they come true….
