A study led by Plana-Ripoll, a doctor at Aarhus University in Denmark, tries to deal with a fundamental question that has bothered researchers for more than a century—what exactly causes mental illness?
In the hope of finding the answer, scientists have piled up a large amount of data over the past decade, through studies of genes and brain activity. They have found that many of the same genes underlie seemingly distinct disorders and that changes in the brain's decision-making systems could be involved in many conditions.
The researchers are also rethinking theories of how our brains go wrong. The idea that mental illness can be classified into distinct, separate categories like "anxiety" has been disproved to a large extent. Instead, recently they've found that disorders shade into each other, and there are no hard dividing lines.
The researchers are trying to understand the biology that underlies mental illness. They have a few theories. Perhaps there are several dimensions of mental illness, so depending on how a person scores on each dimension, they might be more likely to have some disorders than others. An alternative idea is that there is a single factor that makes people easier to suffer from mental illness in general. What disorder they develop is then determined by other factors. Both ideas are being taken seriously though the former one is more widely accepted by the researchers.
The details are still unclear, but most researchers agree that one thing is specific: The old system of categorizing mental disorders into neat boxes does not work. They are also hopeful that, in the long run, replacing this framework with one that is grounded in biology will lead to new drugs and treatments. The researchers aim to reveal, for instance, the key genes, brain regions and neurological processes involved in psychopathology(精神病理学), and target them with treatments. Although it might take a while to get there, they are long-term optimistic if the field really does its work.
