The future of psychiatry as clinical neuroscience

Psychiatry includes the assessment, treatment, and prevention of complex brain disorders, such as depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, developmental disorders (e.g., autism), and neurodegenerative disorders (e.g., Alzheimer dementia). Its core mission is to prevent and alleviate the distress and impairment caused by these disorders, which account for a substantial part of the global burden of illness-related disability. Psychiatry is grounded in clinical neuroscience. Its core mission, now and in the future, is best served within this context because advances in assessment, treatment, and prevention of brain disorders are likely to originate from studies of etiology and pathophysiology based in clinical and translational neuroscience. To ensure its broad public health relevance in the future, psychiatry must also bridge science and service, ensuring that those who need the benefits of its science are also its beneficiaries. To do so effectively, psychiatry as clinical neuroscience must strengthen its partnerships with the disciplines of public health (including epidemiology), community and behavioral health science, and health economics.The authors present a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of psychiatry and identify strategies for strengthening its future and increasing its relevance to public health and the rest of medicine. These strategies encompass new approaches to strengthening the relationship between psychiatry and neurology, financing psychiatry's mission, emphasizing early and sustained multidisciplinary training (research and clinical), bolstering the academic infrastructure, and reorganizing and refinancing mental health services both for preventive intervention and cost-effective chronic disease management.