The Clinical Experience and Potential of Brain Imaging in Patients with Mental Illness

INTRODUCTION Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is rarely used as an investigation in clinical psychiatric practice. The reasons for this are several, and include the cultural viewpoint of psychiatry as a psychosocial specialty as well as particular concerns about the experience of brain imaging amongst patients and clinicians. Where MRI is used it is to exclude neurological disorders in those presenting with mental illness. However the yield of such disorders through MRI screening not detected through other clinical examination in ‘typical’ presentations of mental illness is very low, and routine MRI is not currently recommended for those with mental illness without warning signs of neurological disorder. However functional imaging does have clinical potential, with the possibility for assisting both with diagnosis and treatment planning, and this potential will be discussed.