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26 - Should Psychiatry Be Precise? Reduction, Big Data, and Nosological Revision in Mental Health Research

from Section 9

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2020

By
Kathryn Tabb
Edited by
Kenneth S. Kendler ,
Josef Parnas  and
Peter Zachar
Kenneth S. Kendler
Affiliation:
Virginia Commonwealth University
Josef Parnas
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Peter Zachar
Affiliation:
Auburn University, Montgomery
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Summary

TThe twenty-first century paradigm of precision medicine can be characterized by its joint commitments to (1) the revision of traditional nosological systems (2) the utilization of transformative new methods of data collection and analysis (“big data”), and (3) the employment of scientific methods able to reduce complex phenomenological, behavioral, and physiological signs and symptoms to underlying biomechanisms. This chapter assesses the value of these commitments for psychiatry, and concludes that they are collectively neither necessary nor sufficient for progress in the explanation of, and intervention upon, mental disorders. Each holds promise and has proved transformative in some areas of psychiatric research and practice, but their appropriateness is better assessed independently and circumstantially. Meanwhile, the value of other traditional psychiatric commitments – such as to the principled demarcation of the pathological from the normal, and the prioritization of research that has clinical application – should not be abandoned amidst the current vogue for precision.

Keywords

Precision MedicinePsychiatryResearch Domains Criteria (RDoC)NIMHNosologyReductionismBig Data
Type
Chapter
Information
Levels of Analysis in Psychopathology
Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
 , pp. 308 - 334
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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