Dear Colleagues,

Depressive disorders represent a common and disabling group of mental disorders. In the past decades,  there has been achieved much progress in the research on the mechanisms and pathways underlying depression,  including multiple levels of explanation and analysis. There have been implicated molecular biomarkers of nitro-oxidative stress and immune-inflammatory pathways, detected in peripherical blood, and associated with major clinical  features of disease. Alterations in micro-structure, dynamic functional and effective connectivity, and brain task related functional magnetic-resonance imaging studies contributed to producing an overarching biological "fingerprint" which  may identify depressive disorder in terms of differential diagnosis with other psychotic or affective disorders.
This special issue is focused on integrative models that bring together clinical measures, with molecular, neurophysiological and brain imaging technologies to improve procedures and diagnostic criteria and critically  inform treatment guidelines and protocols in psychiatry.

Prof. Dr. Drozdstoy S. Stoyanov
Guest Editor