Unmet Needs in Modern Psychiatry

According to the World Health Organization (2016), mental disorders dramatically contribute to the social and financial burden across countries. Specifically, they negatively impact the quality of life among those affected and their families as well are a source of economic consequences around the world. Despite efforts spent for caring for psychiatric patients and treating mental disorders, there are still many unmet needs in several domains of mood disorders, schizophrenia, and suicide risk. For example, treatment resistance, nonadherence, and adverse effects are some of the more essential unmet needs. It has been repeatedly shown that the needs of patients, relatives, the community at large and those of the governmental bodies only partially overlap. For instance, patients and their families are more concerned about quality of life, treatment, autonomy, independent living and so on; governmental stakeholders are typically more concerned about relapse prevention and reduction of hospitalizations. Unmet Needs in Modern Psychiatry features contributions by opinion leaders in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. Reviews in this issue cover treatment options and perspectives for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, cognitive symptoms in major depressive disorder, Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy and other rare CNS / neurodegenerative diseases. It represents a decisive step in the management of patients suffering from psychiatric illness with the goal of enabling healthcare professionals to identify the most common needs of those affected, describe the type of aid, and determine the associated variables to unmet psychiatric needs.