Mental disorders are a serious condition. People around the world refer to sadness, insanity, and even rage as a mental disorder. The world needs to understand that these disorders are neither binary nor exclusive. In fact, mental disorders are complex and universal. To better understand a mental disorder, it is smart to think of a continuum on which the world’s population stands. If it is a spectrum, the first end is where people are thriving and are at ease. In the middle of this spectrum, there are people who are coping with difficulties and struggling to keep up with the fast pace of the world. On the other end, there are people with mental disorders. For them, traveling to the other end is the most difficult. Mental disorders make people impaired and disabled as these conditions intervene with the day to day life, making it a challenge to survive the day.
Importance of Early Detection and Prediction of Severe Mental Disorders
There are three severe mental disorders in the world, and these are bipolar disorder, severe, major depression, and schizophrenia. All three severe mental disorders are classified under the category of the early age of onset. These disorders usually start in teenage or young adult years. By the time these disorders are diagnosed, it is too late. Severe mental disorders transition into chronic and lifelong problem overtime, causing disability, and considerably reducing the quality of a victim’s life. The importance of early detection, prediction, and prevention in the case of mental disorders cannot be overlooked.
Several psychiatric researchers are working in the movement of discovering and designing strategies that allow early detection of these mental disorders. A prominent individual in this movement is Paolo Fusar-Poli, an Italian clinical academic professional, medical doctor, and a psychiatrist. From the time he graduated as Medical Doctor in 2002, he has been working to devise strategies that assist the sector of psychiatry in early detection, prediction, and prevention of severe mental disorders such as psychosis or schizophrenia.
A Highly Cited Researcher and His Groundbreaking Research
Paolo Fusar-Poli is a 43-year-old Academic Lead of the Early Psychosis Workstream of the National Institute for Health Research for Mental Health Translational Research Collaborative. He was born in Cremona, Italy, on July 27, 1977. He graduated as a medical doctor in the year 2002 and then completed his graduation in Psychiatry in 2006 from the University of Pavia. He stepped into research in the year 2005, and he began making major contributions in notable journals and articles. In just one year, Paolo had published seven research papers which revolved around psychiatric neuroimaging, depression, and electrophysiological studies.
To further his reach in the field of psychiatry, he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in the same university. During his Ph.D., Paolo got deeper into research and stepped into the field of severe mental disorders. In the year 2007, he worked on schizophrenic spectrum disorders and other branches of psychosis. In this year alone, he had almost twenty publications under his name. Psychosis was his major focus, and other areas he covered were epilepsy in children, acute tryptophan depletion, and depression. The next year he worked on twelve collaborative research projects in 2008, followed by eighteen in 2009. He obtained his Ph.D. in the year 2009.
Paolo spent three years in research and, from 2010 to 2012, had more than eighty publications in his name. He also worked as a consultant psychiatrist and junior researcher across Italy and the UK. Most of his publications circulated the topics of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. He worked on mapping vulnerability among people to develop severe mental disorders or psychosis. His primary focus was on the early detection of psychosis for better treatments. He thoroughly studied high-risk states, and his research made significant contributions to psychiatry. In 2012, he was presented with the Rising Star Award by the Schizophrenia International Research Society.
In these three years, he had become a notable researcher in the area of psychosis. His contribution to the field of psychiatry received global recognition. In the year 2012, In 2012, King’s College London (KCL) awarded him a tenured position. Moreover, he was granted the Specialist Associateship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It was in the same year Dr. Fusar-Poli worked with the Outreach Support at South London (OASIS) at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust as a consultant psychiatrist, where he works to date. In addition to this, Paolo has been one of the most highly cited researchers in this industry from 2015 to 2019.
He is affiliated with the Schizophrenia Bulletin as a Review Editor and as a Section Editor for the Journal of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Brain Research. He also served as an expert advisor for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. As of 2020, Dr. Paolo has more than 300 publications under his name, which makes him a leading entity in the world of psychiatry.
Dr. Paolo Fusar-Poli – A Prominent Part in the Field of Psychiatry
Currently, he is serving as multiple top-of-the-line positions in highly esteemed institutions. Along with being the Reader of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health at KCL, he is also the Associate Professor at the University of Pavia and Head of the Head of Early Psychosis: Intervention and Clinical-detection (EPIC) lab. Other than this, he serves as the chair of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Network for the Prevention of Mental Disorders and Mental Health Promotion. Dr. Paolo is also the Section Coordinator of the Italian Medical Society of Great Britain.
For the past decade, from 2010 to 2020, he has been in the top 0.0046% of 43,252 published authors on psychotic disorders in the world. Some of his most notable publications include; “Functional atlas of emotional faces processing: a voxel-based meta-analysis of 105 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies,” “Predicting Psychosis Meta-analysis of Transition Outcomes in Individuals at High Clinical Risk,” “Cognitive Functioning in Prodromal Psychosis A Meta-analysis,” “Opposite Effects of Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol and Cannabidiol on Human Brain Function and Psychopathology,” and “Abnormal Frontostriatal Interactions in People with Prodromal Signs of Psychosis A Multimodal Imaging Study.” His research is not just limited to schizophrenia, but he has worked on Truman Syndrome as well.
Dr. Paolo Fusar-Poli’s contributions are invaluable for the field of psychiatry. Early diagnosis of mental disorders is a crucial aspect of the treatment. He is a prominent contributor to the movement. He is helping psychiatrists get ahead of the diagnosis and develop a strategy that works well for early detection, prediction of outcomes, and prevention of severe mental disorders.