Mental disorders have been found to share common genotypes and phenotypes including anhedonia, amotivation, delusions, and memory impairment. Examining the underlying mechanisms corresponding for the aetiology and development of psychopathology of these common symptoms is important to facilitate the development of improved prevention and treatment strategies. Recent empirical findings also suggest that symptoms appearing clinically distinct may result from the same aetiology, while similar symptoms based on clinical presentation have been shown to be heterogeneous by laboratory tests. The use of a transdiagnostic approach to study mental disorders may offer us a unique opportunity to examine the common and unique mechanisms of common symptoms among different mental disorders at genomic and phenomic levels.

Drs. Raymond Chan from the Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience (NACN) Laboratory, CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, and his collaborators Prof. Hong-wei Sun and Dr. Emma Barkus have organized a special issue addressing the transdiagnostic study of mental disorders in PsyCh Journal. This special issue consists of 11 papers covering affective and cognitive manifestations of mental disorders, neural correlates of transdiagnostic groups, and the underlying cognitive processing and potential target for non-medical intervention. They hope this special issue may draw the attention of scholars, especially those from mainland China, to work for the possible biomarkers of different mental disorders and improve the development of more targeted therapeutic programmes. By the way, Dr. Chan has recently established a Virtual Research Centre for Transdiagnostic Clinical and Subclinical Groups and built up a strong clinical and research network to specifically adopt a transdiagnostic approach to investigating mental disorders.

This special issue is now published PsyCh Journal

Special Issue: Transdiagnostic Mental Disorders. PsyCh Journal, Volume 9, Issue 2, 153-289.