Yet methods of diagnosis and treatment for patients with mental disorders have remained
relatively unchanged. Indeed, during the same time, the public health burden of mental
disorders has grown alarmingly. Mental disorders are now among the largest sources of
medical disability worldwide1 and, like AIDS and cancer, they are urgent and deadly. 2, 3 In
this commentary, we argue that psychiatry's impact on public health will require that mental
disorders be understood and treated as brain disorders. In the past, mental disorders were …