Treatment-Induced Brain Plasticity in Psychiatric Disorders

In tandem with a better-informed neurobiological model of mental illness, psychiatry has progressively been shaped into its current state of clinical neuroscience. The traditional dichotomy of organic versus endogenous mental disorders has been replaced by the growing recognition that all changes in mental processes are accompanied by changes in structures or functions of the brain. Thus, all psychiatric interventions are deemed to have a biopsychosocial nature, whereby drugs in addition to their effect on the brain have a psychological effect, and psychotherapies beyond their psychological effects may alter the brain. In this view, the ultimate goal of any psychiatric treatment is to induce neural plasticity in a manner that restores the full original function and potential of the injured brain. Herein present chapter gives an insight into how evidence-based treatments achieve their therapeutic effects on the level of cerebral reorganization across a host of psychiatric disorders. The main theme of this work is the posited mechanism of neuroplasticity on neural-systems level for each treatment modality.