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

Type Book Section Editor Josef Parnas Editor Kenneth S. Kendler Editor Peter Zachar Author Kathryn Tabb URL https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/levels-of-analysis-in-psychopathology/should-psychiatry-be-precise-reduction-big-data-and-nosological-revision-in-mental-health-research/B18F3C08E0E6D74EE2E9FA1CC5275737 Place Cambridge Publisher Cambridge University Press Pages 308-334 ISBN 978-1-108-48519-7 Date 2020 Extra DOI: 10.1017/9781108750349.028 Accessed 2022-07-23 18:25:27 Library Catalog Cambridge University Press Abstract 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. Book Title Levels of Analysis in Psychopathology: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives Short Title Should Psychiatry Be Precise?