2022 Articles

Transdisciplinary Science and Research Training in Psychiatry: A Robust Approach to Innovation

Reynolds, Charles F.; Weissman, Myrna M.

In this Viewpoint, we address transdisciplinary science and its potential for innovation in psychiatry. Transdisciplinary denotes a dialogue-based process in which disciplines with different perspectives integrate expertise and in the process, develop a unity of intellectual frameworks beyond disciplinary perspectives. Transdisciplinary science and research training provide a framework for learning and working together, yielding new understanding, a novel lexicon, concepts, methods, teams, research training paradigms, and holistic knowledge. Transdisciplinary research and research training further break down the boundaries between disciplines that may have begun in interdisciplinary science.1,2 Interdisciplinary (between disciplines), and multidisciplinary (many disciplines) are not the same as transdisciplinary, which refers specifically to the process of integrating disciplines in which scientists work together on common problems with different methods. The research output of transdisciplinary science is thus not merely additive (as in multidisciplinary research), but changes as a result of integration and breakdown of boundaries across disciplines. We suggest that theory of change (ToC) modeling offers a path to the integration inherent in transdisciplinary science. ToC is a method that explains how a set of interventions is expected to lead to a specific developmental change (eg, more effective health care), drawing on a potential causal pathway based on available evidence.3