Animal models are often inadequate for psychiatric diseases. They seldom show disease mechanisms, symptoms, or behaviors equivalent to those in humans (2, 11). Although animal models can mimic anatomical, metabolic, and behavioral aspects of brain diseases, psychiatric diagnosis depends heavily on the patient’s verbal history of illness, reports of subjective feelings, and cognitive performance, features that cannot be replicated in animals (15–20). In the absence of biomarkers that reflect disease presence, severity, and mechanisms, inferences about psychiatric disease from animal research remain limited in scope and often speculative (2, 11, 21, 22). Hence, too frequently, leaps of faith hide within the translation of preclinical work on psychiatric disease into bedside patient care (2, 11, 18, 19).
