Bioinformatics for a clinical psychiatrist?

This is a question that I have asked myself, and been asked by some of my colleagues. What is the use of bioinformatics and its techniques to us as clinical psychiatrists? What can we add to the understanding of molecular basis of psychiatric diseases as clinical psychiatrists?

To me, being a clinical psychiatrist, with some knowledge in molecular neuroscience, and the techniques of bioinformatics, give me a number of strength points. I see the suffering of the patients and their families, and I see the development of the symptoms as they affect my patients. I grasp a hold of the different psychiatric symptomatology, they are not only neurotransmitter dysfunction or developmental defect of wiring. They are causes of patients' sufferings.

I get a strong motivation towards unfolding the molecular mysteries of the mental illness; and I gain insight towards the function and malfunction of the brain. This generates different questions that I plan to explore using bioinformatics, and give me some principles on how to use the data gained from animal models, cell culture studies, and other different techniques to try to answer questions at the level of the human psychiatric diseases.

In the past century, physics and chemistry were able to provide the theoretical and mathematical basis to understand the molecular processes. But since that biological systems, especially in eukaryotes, particularly of mammals, and certainly maximal in the brain, are highly complex, scientists were not able to use all that theoretical framework to the brain and its circuits. This century, with the development of different computational tools that can make use of the computing capabilities, and with all the efforts now directed towards the molecular aspect of life, neuroscientists are capable of tackling different questions they have, and of tackling more as they arise.