We, psychiatrists, have heard from patients and their families questions, concerns, and desires about psychiatric care as follows: "Although I need to drive a car for my daily life and also have kept my bipolar disorder under control for 3 years, my doctor hasn't allowed me to drive. My doctor told me that the package insert of a prescribed mood stabilizer states: "this medication may cause drowsiness and dizziness, do not engage in operating hazardous machinery including automobiles, and that's why he cannot allow me to drive. I wonder when I can drive my car as usual." "My daughter with anorexia nervosa ignores her thinness and impatiently opposes our advice to eat more food. We, as her parents, cannot understand what she thinks and feels even if her doctor emphasizes the need for us to understand her." "My schizophrenic son was prescribed antidepressants with a diagnosis of depression. His psychotic symptoms, however, became worse and he was hospitalized with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Although he does not have hallucinations any more, he became a mere shadow of himself and is not what he used to be. We have noticed that a longer duration of untreated psychosis causes an unfavorable prognosis. Please develop a diagnostic method to prevent others from having to go through what happened to my son."
 Because the above-mentioned patients' or their families' demands are clinical questions, to answer those questions we have carried out the following clinical psychiatric research. To resolve the issue related to patients' driving, we have assessed the acute and chronic effects of psychotropics and sleep on driving ability measured by a driving simulator, as well as cognitive functions and brain activity measured by near-infrared spectroscopy. We have also clarified age- and depression-related changes in driving ability. In addition, we have performed studies to determine risk factors for elevated liver enzymes during refeeding and their effect on the therapeutic process in severely malnourished patients with anorexia nervosa, and to understand the pathophysiology associated with their symptoms we examined their functional and morphometric changes in the brain. Moreover, in order to transform the current symptom-based psychiatric diagnosis and develop diagnostic methods and treatments based on the etiopathology, we have been trying to elucidate the molecular pathogenesis of mental disorders using molecular genetics, imaging, postmortem brains, and cell- or tissue-based models (induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) established from patients with pathogenic variants), as well as animal models with high construct validity.
 Finally, because the goal of psychiatric research to respond to patients' and their families' demands is, unfortunately, still beyond our reach, we have been training research-oriented psychiatrists indispensable for future research who can promote innovative and personalized care for patients.
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