Journal of Molecular Psychiatry

It is my pleasure to welcome you to the new Journal of Molecular Psychiatry – JMP! Molecular Psychiatry is a rapidly expanding field and there are high hopes that its findings will improve the condition of patients suffering from psychiatric disorders in terms of diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. There is only a limited number of journals specialising in this exciting area, and we believe that a modern internet-based electronic journal fully dedicated to the open-access principle with a thorough and efficient peer-review process and without space restrictions, will serve well the communication and publication needs of the scientific community. All articles published in JMP will be open access, therefore complying with the open access policies of funders including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute [1], NIH [2], and Wellcome Trust [3]. We are proud that one of the first publications in JMP is authored by Eric Nestler [4], who together with Ron Duman – coined the term “Molecular Psychiatry” in the 1980s. Considered by many as the “Father of Molecular Psychiatry” and an eminent researcher, he critically reviews the historical development this discipline has undertaken during the last 30 years. He points out chances and opportunities, but also mentions mishaps and disappointments. While the term “molecular psychiatry” is widely used, surprisingly little has been published about its meaning and conceptualisation. Many seem to use the term as a more contemporary synonym for “biological psychiatry”. However, “biological psychiatry” usually represents a quite reductionist view of mental health and psychiatric disorders as phenomena which can and should exclusively be understood and explained in a mechanistic way based on neuroscience and pathophysiology. Thus, human behaviour is interpreted as the result or simple metaphenomenon of processes occurring on the cellular, genetic and molecular level. Unfortunately, this does not reflect the reality of clinical practice and the humanistic roots of psychiatry which are equally important as its biological aspects. It is one of