Many psychiatric illnesses are related to stress. Negative experiences in childhood can often affect how we deal with stress later in life. But what biological processes are involved? A study recently published in the journal ...
Apr 9, 2024
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Smoking likely shrinks the brain, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The good news is that quitting smoking can prevent further loss of brain tissue—but still, ...
Dec 12, 2023
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Schizophrenia, a neurodevelopmental disorder that features psychosis among its symptoms, is thought to arise from disorganization in brain connectivity and functional integration. Now, a recent study in Biological Psychiatry: ...
Oct 17, 2023
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After a traumatic experience, most people recover without incident, but some people—between 2% and 10%—develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental health condition that can cause debilitating symptoms of anxiety ...
Sep 21, 2023
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Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a neurological disorder characterized by repeated behaviors such as cleaning and checking despite clear objective evidence of cleanliness, orderliness, and correctness. Although the ...
Sep 12, 2023
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Mania, in which mood and energy level are extremely elevated for at least a week, and hypomania, which is less severe and lasts at least four days, are the defining features of bipolar spectrum disorders (BSD) and can be ...
Jul 13, 2023
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Major depressive disorder (MDD) is not only among the most common mental illnesses, affecting more than 8% of Americans, but it is also extremely variable from one person to another. Researchers have recently begun making ...
Jun 27, 2023
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About two-thirds of the risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is thought to arise from genetic influences, but about a third could be influenced by environment and lifestyle, opening the door for behavioral interventions that ...
May 31, 2023
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Dysregulation of the dopamine neurotransmitter system has long been associated with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis, but recently researchers have begun to examine the glutamate and GABA systems as well.
May 11, 2023
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A new study in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, identifies a therapeutic tool focused on emotional awareness that increased activation and connectivity of an emotion-regulating center in the ...
Apr 17, 2023
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Biological psychiatry, or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system. It is interdisciplinary in its approach and draws on sciences such as neuroscience, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, genetics and physiology to investigate the biological bases of behaviour and psychopathology. Biopsychiatry is that branch/speciality of medicine,which deals with the study of biological function of the nervous system in mental disorders.
While there is some overlap between biological psychiatry and neurology, the latter generally focuses on disorders where gross or visible pathology of the nervous system is apparent, such as epilepsy, cerebral palsy, encephalitis, neuritis, Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. There is some overlap with neuropsychiatry, which typically deals with behavioural disturbance in the context of apparent brain disorder.
Biological psychiatry and other approaches to mental illness are not mutually exclusive, but may simply attempt to deal with the phenomena at different levels of explanation. Because of the focus on the biological function of the nervous system, however, biological psychiatry has been particularly important in developing and prescribing drug-based treatments for mental disorders.
In practice, however, psychiatrists may advocate both medication and psychological therapies when treating mental illness. The therapy is more likely to be conducted by clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, occupational therapists or other mental health workers who are more specialised and trained in non-drug approaches.
The history of the field extends back to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, but the term biological psychiatry was first used in peer-reviewed scientific literature in 1953. The term is more commonly used in the US than in some other countries such as the UK. The field, however, is not without its critics and the phrase "biological psychiatry" is sometimes used by those critics as a term of disparagement.
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