NEUROPSYCHIATRIEPub Date : 2026-04-29DOI: 10.1007/s40211-026-00577-3
Johannes Wancata, Fabian Friedrich
{"title":"Mental healthcare planning: current and future challenges.","authors":"Johannes Wancata, Fabian Friedrich","doi":"10.1007/s40211-026-00577-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-026-00577-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Reforms of psychiatric care systems in Western countries have been guided by several principles such as de-institutionalization, mental healthcare close to the community, and integration into general healthcare. This paper reflects the achievements, shortfalls, and problems of selected aspects of mental health reforms. Despite major improvements, there have also been some setbacks. We consider such analyses to be essential for future care planning.</p>","PeriodicalId":44560,"journal":{"name":"NEUROPSYCHIATRIE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147785096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NEUROPSYCHIATRIEPub Date : 2026-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s40211-026-00575-5
Nicole Borg, Caroline Vassallo, Catherine Dimech
{"title":"Prolonged social withdrawal (hikikomori) in a small European island state: a case report.","authors":"Nicole Borg, Caroline Vassallo, Catherine Dimech","doi":"10.1007/s40211-026-00575-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-026-00575-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Hikikomori, described as \"prolonged social withdrawal,\" is a condition characterized by an individual's severe social isolation in their home for at least 6 months with consequent functional impairment or distress. It is mainly observed in adolescents and young adults. It was initially described in Japanese cultures, but has since been reported in other countries. This report is the first to describe a case of hikikomori in a male patient in Malta, an island nation in the central Mediterranean and one of Europe's smallest countries. He presented to psychiatric services incidentally after over 20 years of being voluntarily housebound. The social isolation occurred in the context of social anxiety with agoraphobia and an overreliance on the online world. We discuss the multidisciplinary team approach applied throughout the inpatient hospitalization period, with a focus on rehabilitation and functional improvement, while prioritizing the patient's wishes and preferences. This case reinforces the view of hikikomori as a culturally influenced syndrome, rather than a culturally bound one.</p>","PeriodicalId":44560,"journal":{"name":"NEUROPSYCHIATRIE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147327769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NEUROPSYCHIATRIEPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-10-07DOI: 10.1007/s40211-025-00551-5
U Volpe, R Ramalho, W Gaebel
{"title":"Risks of digitalization in mental health care.","authors":"U Volpe, R Ramalho, W Gaebel","doi":"10.1007/s40211-025-00551-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40211-025-00551-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The digitalization of mental health care has ushered in transformative possibilities for enhancing access, diagnosis, and treatment through technologically enabled tools and platforms. However, this evolution presents substantial risks that warrant careful consideration. This paper critically examines the psychological, ethical, cultural, and clinical challenges embedded in digital mental health practices. Key concerns include diminished clinical oversight, compromised patient data security, algorithmic bias in diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms, and the erosion of traditional therapeutic relationships. Cultural disparities in digital literacy and engagement further complicate equitable care delivery. Through a multidisciplinary lens, the paper explores how these risks may impact both care outcomes and professional standards. To bridge the gap between innovation and responsible practice, a table of best practices is provided to support clinicians and developers in ethically integrating digital tools into psychiatric settings. These recommendations aim to uphold patient autonomy, strengthen clinician accountability, and preserve the humanistic foundation of mental health care. Ultimately, the paper advocates for a balanced and cautious approach to digitalization-one that embraces opportunity without compromising clinical integrity.</p>","PeriodicalId":44560,"journal":{"name":"NEUROPSYCHIATRIE","volume":" ","pages":"37-40"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12960333/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145240118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NEUROPSYCHIATRIEPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-12-16DOI: 10.1007/s40211-025-00564-0
Mojtaba Oraki Kohshour, Alba Navarro-Flores, Urs Heilbronner, Thomas G Schulze
{"title":"Multi-omics approaches to major psychiatric disorders.","authors":"Mojtaba Oraki Kohshour, Alba Navarro-Flores, Urs Heilbronner, Thomas G Schulze","doi":"10.1007/s40211-025-00564-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40211-025-00564-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In recent years, major psychiatric disorders have been intensively researched. Studies have investigated the pathophysiology of these disorders in detail and at various molecular levels with several omics techniques, including genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. However, although the results of a single omics study can help shed light on some of the unclear aspects of the biological circuits involved in the pathophysiology of major psychiatric disorders, the complexity of the biological mechanisms underlying these conditions makes it necessary to consider multiple types of omics data and multiple levels of analysis, including various conceptional, methodological, and quality control criteria. Currently, dealing with high-dimensional data and sparse heterogeneous data structures remains one of the biggest challenges to integrating data from multi-omics approaches. The hope is that eventually the development and application of methods to integrate biological and phenotypic data through multi-omics and machine learning-based algorithms may allow early diagnosis of major psychiatric disorders, perhaps even before disease onset, and enable accurate, personalized treatment. In this mini-review, we summarized the main findings of the field by reviewing systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and narrative reviews on the major psychiatric disorders schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder.</p>","PeriodicalId":44560,"journal":{"name":"NEUROPSYCHIATRIE","volume":" ","pages":"23-30"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12960317/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145764176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NEUROPSYCHIATRIEPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-09-18DOI: 10.1007/s40211-025-00543-5
Norman Sartorius
{"title":"The future of psychiatry.","authors":"Norman Sartorius","doi":"10.1007/s40211-025-00543-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40211-025-00543-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The future of psychiatry depends upon the development of knowledge about the functioning of the brain and the human body, on the changes to the world in which we live, and on the impact of major socioeconomic trends such as urbanization. This article describes the impact of these trends on mental health and health programs and lists what should be done to reduce mental health problems and improve the future of psychiatry.</p>","PeriodicalId":44560,"journal":{"name":"NEUROPSYCHIATRIE","volume":" ","pages":"7-10"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145082128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NEUROPSYCHIATRIEPub Date : 2026-03-01DOI: 10.1007/s40211-026-00571-9
Karwautz A
{"title":"bericht aus dem ögkjp-vorstand.","authors":"Karwautz A","doi":"10.1007/s40211-026-00571-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40211-026-00571-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44560,"journal":{"name":"NEUROPSYCHIATRIE","volume":" ","pages":"48-49"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146144111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NEUROPSYCHIATRIEPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-08-26DOI: 10.1007/s40211-025-00545-3
Danuta Wasserman
{"title":"Advancing mental health for all: WPA 2023-2026 action plan on clinical education and healthy lifestyles.","authors":"Danuta Wasserman","doi":"10.1007/s40211-025-00545-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40211-025-00545-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) is dedicated to advancing mental health through evidence-based and inclusive initiatives. Its 2023-2026 Action Plan emphasizes prevention, early intervention, and comprehensive care, aligned with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals to address broader social determinants of mental health. An important focus of the Action Plan is promoting healthy lifestyles as a fundamental component of mental well-being. Through the Healthy Lifestyle Hub, the WPA promotes the benefits of physical activity, good nutrition, and sleep hygiene in preventing and managing mental health conditions. Complementing these efforts, the Specialist Corner, through dissemination of scientific advances and their clinical applications, facilitates knowledge exchange among clinicians, researchers, and policymakers, while the WHO Brief Motivational Intervention and Contact program (BIC), comprising long-erm regular follow-up of suicide attempters after hospital discharge, enhances suicide prevention. Guided by the EDIT principle-Equality across genders, ages, and ethnicities; Developmental stages from childhood to adulthood and beyond; Inclusion; and Transcultural awareness-the WPA ensures that mental health strategies are inclusive, equitable, and culturally responsive. By integrating scientific advancements with lifestyle-based interventions, the WPA Action Plan serves as a framework for global psychiatry, advocating sustainable and comprehensive approaches to mental well-being.</p>","PeriodicalId":44560,"journal":{"name":"NEUROPSYCHIATRIE","volume":" ","pages":"2-6"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12960445/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144973259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NEUROPSYCHIATRIEPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-09-01DOI: 10.1007/s40211-025-00542-6
Jonathan Campion, Afzal Javed
{"title":"Public mental health: a WPA priority and key opportunity to address implementation failure.","authors":"Jonathan Campion, Afzal Javed","doi":"10.1007/s40211-025-00542-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40211-025-00542-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mental health conditions (MHCs) account for a large proportion of global disease burden and result in broad impacts and associated economic costs. Despite the existence of effective public mental health (PMH) interventions, only a minority of individuals with MHCs receive treatment, far fewer receive interventions to prevent associated impacts, and there is negligible coverage of interventions to prevent MHCs or promote mental wellbeing and resilience. This implementation failure results in population-scale preventable suffering, broad impacts and associated economic costs, which are far greater in low- and middle-income countries. The gap also breaches the right to health and statutory legislation in some countries. The World Psychiatric Association has prioritised PMH and highlighted how a set of coordinated actions can improve PMH implementation, including by effectively making the PMH case, PMH practice, PMH training and improved population knowledge, settings-based and integrated approaches, digital technology, maximising existing resources, use of interventions with a large population impact, a rights approach and legislation, and implementation-focused research. Improved implementation results in broad population impacts, achievement of policy objectives across sectors and sustainable reduction in the impact of MHCs and promotion of population wellbeing. The associated economic benefits make PMH a key part of sustainable economic development.</p>","PeriodicalId":44560,"journal":{"name":"NEUROPSYCHIATRIE","volume":" ","pages":"11-16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12960301/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144973332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NEUROPSYCHIATRIEPub Date : 2026-03-01DOI: 10.1007/s40211-026-00576-4
U Goedl-Fleischhacker
{"title":"bericht aus dem ögpp-vorstand.","authors":"U Goedl-Fleischhacker","doi":"10.1007/s40211-026-00576-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-026-00576-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44560,"journal":{"name":"NEUROPSYCHIATRIE","volume":"40 1","pages":"50-51"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147356787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}