Immunopsychiatry in 2021: premise to promise, and back again

Abstract

2021 was another busy year for the nascent field of immunopsychiatry. A key premise of the contemporary agenda lies in bottom-up pathways: immune mechanisms can affect brain function and contribute to psychiatric illness. An argument follows that irrespective of their origins, these signals can be targeted therapeutically. In turn, there is seemingly a promise of novel precision therapeutics for common and often otherwise treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders. This optimistic vision is not unfounded; there is a growing body of observational, mechanistic, and interventional findings spanning multiple psychopathologies and immune mechanisms.