Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-hqlzj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-28T10:35:50.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Transformative technologies in medicine: a primer for psychiatrists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2023

Neil Mayfield Open the ORCID record for Neil Mayfield [Opens in a new window] ,
Suzy Ker ,
Rachel Steele  and
Stephen Wright
Neil Mayfield*
Affiliation:
Consultant in working age adult psychiatry with Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust at the Princess Road Clinic, Malton, UK. He has been a principal investigator in several National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) treatment studies in people with severe mental illness (SMI).
Suzy Ker
Affiliation:
Consultant in working age adult psychiatry with Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust's North-East York Community Mental Health Team at Huntingdon House, York, UK. Her research interests focus on inequalities experienced by people with SMI and the role of physical activity in helping people with SMI.
Rachel Steele
Affiliation:
Clinical librarian with Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust's Library and Information Service, Lanchester Road Hospital, Durham, UK. She is interested in evidence-based practice in all aspects of healthcare.
Stephen Wright
Affiliation:
Consultant in early intervention in psychosis with Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust at Huntingdon House, York, UK. He has been a principal investigator in NIHR studies of social and lifestyle interventions for psychosis and in his earlier career characterised the first mutations in the human platelet glycoprotein 9 gene.
*
Correspondence Dr Neil Mayfield. Email: neil.mayfield@nhs.net
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Across medicine, key scientific advances in the past couple of decades have deepened knowledge of fundamental mechanisms of disease, leading to new treatments and the possibility of increased personalisation of care. Some of the most important developments in fields as diverse as immunology, the microbiome, genetics, stem cells and artificial intelligence are summarised in this article to raise awareness among psychiatrists and to help understand the opportunities and challenges they may present for mental healthcare in the future.

Keywords

Geneticsother imagingnovel CNS drugsneuroimmunologymedical technology

Information

Type
Article
Information
BJPsych Advances , Volume 30 , Issue 5 , September 2024 , pp. 311 - 321
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal College of Psychiatrists

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Antonucci, L, Raio, A, Pergola, G, et al (2021) Machine learning-based ability to classify psychosis and early stages of disease through parenting and attachment-related variables is associated with social cognition. BMC Psychology, 9: 47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bastiaanssen, TFS (2019) Making Sense of… the microbiome in psychiatry. International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 22: 37–52.Google Scholar
Butler, MI, Mörkl, S, Sandhu, KV, et al (2019) The gut microbiome and mental health: what should we tell our patients? Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 64: 747–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cakici, N (2019) An update on the efficacy of anti-inflammatory agents for patients with schizophrenia: a meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 49: 2307–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Collins, N, Phillips, NLH, Reich, L, et al (2020) Epigenetic consequences of adversity and intervention throughout the lifespan: implications for public policy and healthcare. Adv Res Sci, 1: 205–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cring, MR, Sheffield, VC (2022) Gene therapy and gene correction: targets, progress, and challenges for treating human diseases. Gene Therapy, 29: 3–12.Google ScholarPubMed
D'Alfonso, S, Santesteban-Echarri, O, Rice, S, et al (2017) Artificial intelligence-assisted online social therapy for youth mental health. Frontiers in Psychology, 8: 796.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Picker, LJ (2021) The future of immunopsychiatry: three milestones to clinical innovation. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity – Health, 16: 100314.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fakhoury, M (2019) Artificial intelligence in psychiatry. In Frontiers in Psychiatry (ed Yong-Ku, K): 119–25. Springer.Google Scholar
Ferrulli, A, Toscano, A, Adamo, M, et al (2018) Effects of deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS) on anti-inflammatory gut bacterial species in obesity. Diabetes, 67(suppl 1): 2088.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Figee, M, Riva-Posse, P, Choi, KS, et al (2022) Deep brain stimulation for depression. Neurotherapeutics, 19: 1229–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gong, W, Guo, P, Li, Y, et al (2023) Role of the gut-brain axis in the shared genetic etiology between gastrointestinal tract diseases and psychiatric disorders: a genome-wide pleiotropic analysis. JAMA Psychiatry, 80: 360–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howes, OD, Baxter, L (2023) The drug treatment deadlock in psychiatry and the route forward. World Psychiatry, 22: 2–3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hyde, J, Carr, H, Kelley, N, et al (2022) Efficacy of neurostimulation across mental disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis of 208 randomized controlled trials. Molecular Psychiatry, 27: 2709–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jumper, J, Evans, R, Pritzel, A, et al (2021) Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold. Nature, 596: 583–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klengel, T, Mehta, D, Anacker, C, et al (2013) Allele-specific FKBP5 demethylation mediates gene–childhood trauma interactions. Nature Neuroscience, 16: 33–41.Google ScholarPubMed
Kong, J, Fang, J, Park, J, et al (2018) Treating depression with transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation: state of the art and future perspectives. Frontiers Psychiatry, 9: 20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kusuma, K, Larsen, M, Quiroz, JC, et al (2022) The performance of machine learning models in predicting suicidal ideation, attempts, and deaths: a meta-analysis and systematic review. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 155: 579–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Le Marois, A, Tzavara, E, Ibrahim, EC, et al (2021) RNA therapeutics for mood disorders: current evidence towards clinical trials. Expert Opinion on Investigational Drugs, 30: 721–36.Google Scholar
Leza, JC, Caso, JR, García-Bueno, B (2020) Psychoneuroimmunology. In New Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry (3rd edn) (ed Geddes, JR, Andreasen, NC, Goodwin, GM): 135–43. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lumey, LH, Stein, AD, Kahn, HS, et al (2007) Cohort profile: the Dutch Hunger Winter families study. International Journal of Epidemiology, 36:1196–204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Magrin, E, Semeraro, M, Hebert, N, et al (2022) Long-term outcomes of lentiviral gene therapy for the β-hemoglobinopathies: the HGB-205 trial. Nature Medicine, 28: 81–8.Google ScholarPubMed
Meaney, MJ, Yehuda, R (2018) Epigenetic mechanisms and the risk for PTSD. In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (eds Nemeroff, CB, Marmar, C): 293–314. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mizen, LAM (2023) Demystifying genetic jargon in psychiatry. BJPsych Advances, 29: 103–16.Google Scholar
Mutz, J (2023) Brain stimulation treatment for bipolar disorder. Bipolar Disorders, 25: 9–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2015) Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) for Depression (Interventional Procedures Guidance IPG530). NICE.Google Scholar
Ontario Health (Quality) (2021) Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for people with treatment-resistant depression: a health technology assessment. Ontario Health Technology Assessment Series, 21: 1–232.Google Scholar
Pham, K, Nabizadeh, A, Selek, S (2022) Artificial intelligence and chatbots in psychiatry. Psychiatric Quarterly, 93: 249–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollack, TA, Lennox, BR, Müller, S, et al (2020) Autoimmune psychosis: an international consensus on an approach to the diagnosis and management of psychosis of suspected autoimmune origin. Lancet Psychiatry, 7: 93–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, A, Bhardwaj, A, Malik, YK, et al (2022) Artificial intelligence and psychiatry: an overview. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 70: 103021.Google ScholarPubMed
Razza, LB, Palumbo, P, Moffa, AH, et al (2020) A systematic review and meta-analysis on the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation in depressive episodes. Depression and Anxiety, 37: 594–608.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saeedi, A, Saeedi, M, Maghsoudi, A, et al (2021) Major depressive disorder diagnosis based on effective connectivity in EEG signals: a convolutional neural network and long short-term memory approach. Cognitive Neurodynamics, 5: 239–52.Google Scholar
Scudellari, M (2016) How iPS cells changed the world. Nature, 534: 310–2.Google ScholarPubMed
Shih, JJ, Krusienski, DJ, Wolpaw, JR (2012) Brain-computer interfaces in medicine. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 87: 268–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Silbersweig, DA (2017) Neuroimaging in psychiatry: a quarter century of progress. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 25: 195–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sullivan, CRP (2021) Deep brain stimulation for psychiatric disorders: from focal brain targets to cognitive networks. Neuroimage, 225: 117515.Google ScholarPubMed
Takahashi, K, Yamanaka, S (2006) Induction of pluripotent stem cells from mouse embryonic and adult fibroblast cultures by defined factors. Cell, 126: 663–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tullis, P (2021) The rise of psychedelic psychiatry. Nature, 589: 506–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, L, Ning, Q, Tang, SS (2022) Recent advances and next breakthrough in immunotherapy for cancer treatment. Journal of Immunological Research, 2022: 8052212.Google ScholarPubMed
Zagorski, N (2021) Are brain organoids the next big thing? Psychiatry Online, 56(5): 15.Google Scholar
Zhang, Y, Zhao, Y, Song, X, et al (2020) Modulation of stem cells as therapeutics for severe mental disorders and cognitive impairments. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11: 80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhu, Y, Zhu, L, Wang, X, et al (2022) RNA-based therapeutics: an overview and prospectus. Cell Death & Disease, 13: 644. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41419-022-05075-2.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.