Abstract
Most child and adolescent psychiatrists have, at one time or another, found themselves explaining why ordering a brain scan won’t actually diagnose or help treat the child sitting in their office. The clinician often attempts to explain to the child’s family how neuroimaging is primarily useful in research settings and that we are not yet at a stage where it can be used to diagnose an individual child. This may leave many wondering what utility brain imaging actually has for the core mission of our profession: treating children with psychopathology. Listening to talks by neuroscience leaders in recent years has also become disheartening: researchers are still far from understanding the neurobiological basis for most psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, there are ways in which child and adolescent psychiatric brain imaging research can inform our current clinical practice.
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