[Possibilities and goals of natural science psychiatry]

Psychiatry has become one of the most complex and most difficult, but perhaps also one of the most promising fields of investigation in modern medicine. Psychiatric research involves interdisciplinary cooperation, by which alone, multi-level investigations in all areas, ranging from studies in molecular biology to analyses of complex social interactions, can be carried out. Successful research calls for multilevel strategies and multi-level models. Psychiatric research aims at achieving two goals: first, prevention of psychiatric illnesses, their optimal treatment, as also improvement of the quality of life of patients constitute the therapeutic aim; the second target is to deepen our understanding of the biological and psychological processes of the underlying pathology and of those factors that serve to protect the patient from existing risk situations. Advances in neuropsychiatric research support the realistic assumption that we are on the brink of discovering the biological basis of various psychiatric illnesses and that in the near future we would also succeed in assessing the influence of environmental factors on their course.