Network analysis by systemic text excavation of the concept of personalized psychiatry and precision

1. Encephale. 2021 Aug;47(4):341-347. doi: 10.1016/j.encep.2020.08.008. Epub 2020
Nov 12.

[Network analysis by systemic text excavation of the concept of personalized
psychiatry and precision].

[Article in French]

Gauld C(1), Micoulaud-Franchi JA(2).

Author information:
(1)Centre Hospitalier universitaire Saint-Étienne, service universitaire de
psychiatrie, hôpital Bellevue, 25, boulevard Pasteur, 42000 Saint-Étienne,
France. Electronic address: .
(2)Services d’explorations fonctionnelles du système nerveux, clinique du
sommeil, CHU de Bordeaux, Place Amélie Raba-Leon, 33076 Bordeaux, France; USR
CNRS 3413 SANPSY, CHU Pellegrin, université de Bordeaux, BordeauxFrance.

OBJECTIVES: The current challenges of psychiatric nosology and semiology are
part of an interdisciplinary and integrative framework. The paradigm of the
personalized and precision psychiatry proposes to study this discipline
according to new approaches and methodologies. Personalized and precision
psychiatry therefore requires clarification of its concepts. To our knowledge,
there is no systematic exploration of the literature on the application of the
concepts of personalized and precision medicine in the field of psychiatry. This
article proposes thus to explore the framework of personalized and precision
medicine applied to psychiatry.
METHODS: We explored the framework of personalized and precision medicine
applied to psychiatry by a textual network analysis. Firstly, we performed a
systematic text-mining (Natural Language Processing) from an exhaustive review
of the international literature with the terms « precision psychiatry » and
« personalized psychiatry ». Secondly, this analysis of textual data allowed us to
build a textual network which made it possible to visualize the most proximal
terms (the most frequently associated in the literature). Finally, we extracted
from the network the main dimensions explored in the scientific literature, and
we studied the relative importance of each term by analyzing the network
centrality. In addition, a brief bibliometric analysis was conducted.
RESULTS: We show that personalized and precision psychiatry refers to six
dimensions found in the textual network analysis which correspond to the
scientific fields which study personalized and precision psychiatry: genetics,
pharmacogenetics, artificial intelligence, therapeutic trials, biomarkers and
staging. We explore how each dimension relates to the mechanization of
psychiatric disorders. However, precision and personalized psychiatry, which
tries to refine the levels of mechanistic explanations for psychiatry, suffers
from a conceptual heterogeneity. Indeed, textual analysis also allows us to find
terms referring to a set of heterogeneous concepts. Many methodological fields
and epistemological concepts are invoked in this literature, without
standardization.
CONCLUSIONS: The paradox of personalized and precision psychiatry is to
associate a strong conceptual heterogeneity with a well-defined mechanistic
component. Heterogeneity found in literature on personalized and precision
psychiatry testifies to the lack of a pluralist and integrative theoretical
framework. This framework could be based on a naturalizing but non-reducing
formalism, aware of the societal challenges of the sciences and their
implementation in the research and clinical systems of psychiatry.

Copyright © 2020 L’Encéphale, Paris. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All
rights reserved.

DOI: 10.1016/j.encep.2020.08.008
PMID: 33190818 [Indexed for MEDLINE]

Auteurs Bordeaux Neurocampus