For several years, the choice of a treatment has been based on the subjective judgment of clinicians driven by their scientific knowledge and experience, and focused towards the selection of the most appropriate therapeutic strategy.
The awareness of providing treatment grounded on the latest scientific evidence, the difficulty to follow the increasing number of data published in international journals, as well as the interest of the public health services to optimize costs have prompted researchers to develop treatment protocols. The evidence-based medicine has led to the preparation of guidelines that attained increasing clinical relevance, showing an indisputable superiority with respect to the subjectivity of the previous approaches. This applies to different medical fields where high tech and more precise methods ensure stable and predictable responses (i.e. anesthesiology, cardiology and oncology). Recently, even psychiatry entered the domain of evidence-based medicine with the development of diagnostic systems, rating scales, structured clinical interviews and, finally, the development of treatment guidelines.

(…) Translating scientific evidence into daily practice is a complex task. Clinical guidelines can improve psychiatry care delivery and practice, but there are a number of challenges in guideline adoption and implementation strategies that need to be established as yet.

“Clinical Psychopharmacotherapy edited by Marazzitti is a comprehensive look at the entire spectrum of mental disorders and their treatments featuring a tour de force of Italian experts, scientists and clinicians.  It is up to date, and should serve as a most useful reference now that it is available in English.  Congratulations to the contributors and editor”.

Stephen M. Stahl
University of California, San Diego