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These limitations have led to increasing recognition that mental disorders may be better understood in terms of underlying dimensions and mechanisms rather than discrete diagnostic categories or symptom clusters. Importantly, this shift is not only a change in classification but also reflects a move toward conceptualizing mental health and psychopathology as a set of dynamic, continuous, and interacting processes that unfold over time (Cuthbert Insel et al., 2010). In this context, transdiagnostic and dimensional approaches have emerged as an important paradigm in psychopathology research, emphasizing shared psychological, cognitive, and neurobiological processes that cut across traditional diagnostic boundaries (Aldao et al., 2016;Dalgleish et al., 2020;Harvey et al., 2004). Frameworks such as the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) have provided theoretical scaffolding and promoted multilevel approaches integrating behavioral, cognitive, physiological, and neural systems to better understand mental health and mental disorders (Insel et al., 2010;Insel, 2014). These approaches are closely linked to translational neuroscience and precision psychiatry, which aim to translate fundamental knowledge about brain and behavior into more precise and individualized interventions (Fernandes et al., 2017). Figure 1 provides an integrative schematic of this conceptual shift, illustrating how transdiagnostic symptom dimensions emerge from dynamic interactions between neurocognitive, biological, and environmental systems across time, and how these processes inform translational and precision psychiatry approaches. techniques applied to narratives from patients, relatives, clinicians, and the general population, identified common transdiagnostic distal factors and psychological processes, including emotional difficulties, relational problems, trauma, and self-related processes, that cut across diagnostic boundaries and contribute to heterogeneous presentations. In addition, Chen et al. (2026) showed that alexithymia mediates the relationship between negative life events and somatic symptoms, highlighting emotional processing deficits as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking stress and mental health symptoms. Collectively, these studies support the view that shared psychological and emotional regulation processes play a central role across mental health conditions, reinforcing transdiagnostic and process-oriented models of psychopathology, and informing more effective clinical interventions.The study protocol by Orlandi et al. (2026) exemplifies a translational, biomarker-oriented perspective, proposing a longitudinal investigation of adolescents with suicidal ideation or suicidal behavior integrating psychological assessment with peripheral biomarkers related to inflammation, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity, and blood-brain barrier integrity. The study is based on the hypothesis that suicidality is a multifactorial and transdiagnostic phenomenon resulting from the interaction between psychological vulnerability, stress-related neuroendocrine dysregulation, and neuroinflammatory processes. Importantly, this approach highlights the close interplay between biological systems and core psychological processes previously discussed, such as emotion regulation, stress responsivity, and cognitive control, reinforcing their integration within a multilevel framework.By combining biological and psychological measures, this study aims to identify biomarker-informed risk profiles and improve early detection and prevention strategies, illustrating the importance of translational and multilevel approaches in mental health research. In a complementary direction, Santamaría-Vázquez et al. (2025) investigated a multimodal non-pharmacological intervention combining respiratory biofeedback, neurofeedback, and median nerve stimulation in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The study reported improvements in behavioral and attentional symptoms, accompanied by changes in EEG activity, particularly increased frontal theta power, suggesting that multimodal neuromodulation and biofeedback approaches may promote neuroplastic changes and modulate underlying neurocognitive and emotional regulatory processes.Together, these findings further support the integration of biomarker-based and psychological approaches within a unified, multilevel model of mental health.In addition, evidence from a recent systematic review indicates that fibromyalgia and major depressive disorder share similar alterations in resting-state functional connectivity, particularly involving the insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and prefrontal regions, suggesting a common neurosignature underlying pain processing and emotional regulation (Tocchetto et al., 2025). Neelapu and Grant (2025) investigated clinical characteristics associated with natural recovery in trichotillomania and skin picking disorder, contributing to the transdiagnostic understanding of recovery processes. Their findings showed that individuals who naturally recovered did not present lower disorder severity compared to those with current symptoms, but they did show significantly lower rates of current psychiatric comorbidities, particularly depression and ADHD. Importantly, many individuals who recovered naturally continued to present subclinical symptoms or replaced the behavior with other repetitive behaviors, suggesting that recovery in body-focused repetitive behaviors may involve symptom substitution or partial remission rather than complete symptom resolution. These findings highlight the importance of comorbidities, emotional regulation processes, and behavioral mechanisms in recovery trajectories, supporting the view that mental health conditions should be understood dimensionally and longitudinally rather than as static diagnostic categories.Another major theme emerging from this Research Topic concerns neurocognitive and brainbody mechanisms underlying mental health conditions. Carvalho (2026) proposed a neurocognitive framework in which executive dysfunction is conceptualized as a transdiagnostic mechanism underlying multiple forms of psychopathology, influencing cognitive control, emotion regulation, decision-making, and adaptive functioning. Importantly, these processes do not operate in isolation but as interrelated and dynamically interacting mechanisms, in which cognitive control, emotional regulation, and relational/contextual dimensions mutually influence one another. Within this framework, executive dysfunction may represent a core vulnerability embedded in this network of interactions, shaping how individuals regulate emotions, process information, and respond to environmental and interpersonal demands. This study reinforces the association between executive dysfunction and multiple forms of psychopathology, suggesting that it may represent a central mechanism within this interconnected system (Snyder et al., 2015;Zelazo & Cunningham, 2007).Other contributions examined interoception, emotion regulation, and neurocognitive mechanisms associated with emotional processing and mental health, further highlighting the importance of brain- body interactions as part of a coordinated system linking cognitive, emotional, and physiological processes across mental disorders (Khalsa et al., 2018).Together, the studies included in this Research Topic reflect a broader conceptual transition in mental health research: a shift from disorder-based models toward dimensional, transdiagnostic, and mechanism-based frameworks. Across psychometric, clinical, neurocognitive, and biomarker studies, the collected works highlight the importance of shared psychological, cognitive, emotional, and biological processes that cut across traditional diagnostic boundaries. Importantly, these processes are not static but operate as dynamically interacting systems that evolve over time, shaped by continuous interactions between individuals and their internal and external environments. This body of work also illustrates an important conceptual progression in the field, moving from categorical diagnoses toward dimensional models, from dimensional models toward transdiagnostic mechanisms, and from mechanisms toward biomarker-informed and precision psychiatry approaches. Within this perspective, mental health conditions are better understood as emergent and temporally evolving patterns arising from the interplay of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and biological processes across different timescales. These developments support the integration of dimensional assessment, neurocognitive mechanisms, brain-body processes, and biological markers within longitudinal and multilevel frameworks to better understand mental health conditions and to develop more precise and personalized interventions.Future research in mental health should move toward integrative, multilevel, and longitudinal models that combine behavioral, cognitive, neurophysiological, and biological data. Advances in computational psychiatry, machine learning, digital phenotyping, wearable technologies, and In this context, the paradigm shift from discrete diagnostic categories to transdiagnostic mechanisms represents not only a methodological change but also a conceptual transformation in how mental disorders are understood. Rather than discrete entities, mental health conditions may be better conceptualized as dynamic systems resulting from interactions between cognitive, emotional,
Carvalho et al. (Thu,) studied this question.