Thomas A. Ban: RDoC in Historical Perspective

Thomas A. Ban's response to Bernard Carroll’s reply to Samuel Gershon’s question

I share Dr. Carroll’s concern about the adequacy of lumping together people who share one or another biological property for deriving clinically meaningful populations in psychiatry, as done in the RDoC.  I also share his view about the desirability of having biological markers of psychiatric disease. Yet, I wonder whether it is realistic to look for such markers as he suggests, before the identification of the lithium responsive subpopulation within the bipolar disorders, the chlorpromazine responsive subpopulation within the schizophrenias or imipramine responsive subpopulation within the depressions.

Thomas A. Ban

October 1, 2015