Part I.A brief history of biomarkers and mental illness. Psychiatric disorders as "whole body" diseases ; Treatment of psychiatric disorders: time for a paradigm change? ; The importance of biomarkers: the required tools of the trade -- Part II. Psychiatric diseases. Schizophrenia and the mind-body connection ; Progress for better treatment of depression ; The special case of bipolar disorder ; The worrying case of anxiety and stress-related disorders ; The autism spectrum conditions and the extreme male brain syndrome ; Gender and psychiatric disorders -- Part III. Neurogegenerative disorders. Biomarkers and new treatments for Alzheimer's disease ; Parkinson's disease, biomarkers and beyond -- Part IV. The future. The future: towards personalized medicine.
Summary:
Employing accessible language throughout, this book covers the history of psychiatric research, the current state-of-the art in psychiatric practice, the physiological systems affected by psychiatric illnesses, the whole-body nature of these diseases and the impact that this aspect has on emerging biomarker discoveries. Further, it provides descriptions of the major specific psychiatric disorders and the special challenges regarding the diagnosis and treatment of each. The book concludes with insights into the latest developments in hand-held biomarker test devices, which can provide diagnostic information in less than 15 minutes in point-of-care settings. This book investigates the emerging use of biomarkers in the study of psychiatric diseases, a topic of considerable importance for a broad range of people including researchers, clinicians, psychiatrists, university students and even those whose lives are affected in some way by a psychiatric illness. The last category is hardly trivial, since a staggering one in three people worldwide show the criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder at some point in their lifetime.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.