● http://mentalhealth.com/

As we advance in our fight against neurological disorders, it becomes more apparent that we have a lot of catching up to do with regard to psychiatric conditions. There are many reasons why the gap in our understanding of psychiatric problems is so great. For example, we lack animal models for their study. Also, the description of psychiatric disorders that we now have is far from complete, as we haven't identified the precise brain systems that are affected in many of these conditions. In fact, it isn't unusual for psychiatric disorders to be divided into 'organic' and 'functional' categories, a superseded classification that only highlights our lack of success in identifying the neural substrates of the second category. A huge challenge for neuroscientists over the coming years will be to identify the neurobiological underpinnings of psychiatric diseases, bridging at last the long-standing divide between brain research and disorders of the mind.

But where to start? To catch up, we must essentially begin at square one — by learning the basics about the plethora of psychiatric disorders that have been described. A good place to start is Internet Mental Health, a web site maintained by psychiatrist Phillip Long in Vancouver, Canada. The site hosts general information about tens of psychiatric disorders. So you can read about their features, their diagnosis and the methods that are used to treat them. The site also has a clever search engine that is linked to PubMed, which allows you to locate papers on quite specific aspects of the different disorders, aspects you might not even have thought of!

Neuroscience has a great potential to make an impact on psychiatry. The sooner we take a look into the tribulations of the mind, the sooner we'll start to fulfil this potential.