On 2015 Aug 24, Eiko Fried commented:

We have published a commentary on this article in Frontiers of Psychiatry, in which we introduce Symptomics as a novel research paradigm for psychiatry and clinical psychology. We provide a brief summary of the commentary below.

Summary:

"Research has now shown that distinct depression symptoms differ in the risk factors that predispose them, their underlying biology, their response to specific life events, and their impact on impairment of psychosocial functioning. The recently published work by Hieronymus et al. adds the differential reactivity of depression symptoms to antidepressant medication to this prior body of work. The authors argue that the findings stress the importance of analyzing individual depression symptoms in future studies. We would like to extend their claim: these results mandate the examination of symptom-specific effects throughout the realm of psychopathology. Symptomics invites the application of new modeling efforts to the level of individual symptoms as fundamental building blocks of mental disorders. Focusing (A) on the level of symptoms and (B) analyzing the causal relations among them—as an alternative approach to the dominant focus on diagnoses—is likely to extend our understanding of psychopathology directly and significantly. As such, symptomics may herald a time of renewed research energy that could, finally, provide an inroad to achieve real understanding of the mechanisms underlying psychopathology."

Reference:

Fried EI, Boschloo L, van Borkulo CD, Schoevers RA, Romeijn J-W, Wichers MC, de Jonge P, Nesse RM, Tuerlinckx F, & Borsboom D (2015). Commentary: "Consistent superiority of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors over placebo in reducing depressed mood in patients with major depression", Frontiers in Psychiatry 6, 1–3. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00117.

URL: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00117/full

On 2015 Aug 24, Eiko Fried commented:

We have published a commentary on this article in Frontiers of Psychiatry, in which we introduce Symptomics as a novel research paradigm for psychiatry and clinical psychology. We provide a brief summary of the commentary below.

Summary:

"Research has now shown that distinct depression symptoms differ in the risk factors that predispose them, their underlying biology, their response to specific life events, and their impact on impairment of psychosocial functioning. The recently published work by Hieronymus et al. adds the differential reactivity of depression symptoms to antidepressant medication to this prior body of work. The authors argue that the findings stress the importance of analyzing individual depression symptoms in future studies. We would like to extend their claim: these results mandate the examination of symptom-specific effects throughout the realm of psychopathology. Symptomics invites the application of new modeling efforts to the level of individual symptoms as fundamental building blocks of mental disorders. Focusing (A) on the level of symptoms and (B) analyzing the causal relations among them—as an alternative approach to the dominant focus on diagnoses—is likely to extend our understanding of psychopathology directly and significantly. As such, symptomics may herald a time of renewed research energy that could, finally, provide an inroad to achieve real understanding of the mechanisms underlying psychopathology."

Reference:

Fried EI, Boschloo L, van Borkulo CD, Schoevers RA, Romeijn J-W, Wichers MC, de Jonge P, Nesse RM, Tuerlinckx F, & Borsboom D (2015). Commentary: "Consistent superiority of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors over placebo in reducing depressed mood in patients with major depression", Frontiers in Psychiatry 6, 1–3. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00117.

URL: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00117/full