Biosensors for psychiatric biomarkers in mental health monitoring

Psychiatric disorders are associated with serve disturbances in cognition, emotional control, or behavior regulation, yet few routine clinical tools are available for the real-time evaluation and early-stage diagnosis of mental health. Abnormal levels of biomarkers might imply biological, neurological, and developmental dysfunctions of psychiatric patients. Exploring biosensors that can provide rapid, in-situ, and real-time monitoring of psychiatric biomarkers is therefore vital for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of mental disorders. Recently, psychiatric biosensors with high sensitivity, selectivity, and reproducibility have been widely developed, which are mainly based on electrochemical and optical sensing technologies. This review presented psychiatric disorders with high morbidity, disability, and mortality, followed by describing pathophysiology in a biomarker-implying manner. The latest biosensors developed for detecting representative psychiatric biomarkers (e.g., cortisol, dopamine, and serotonin) were comprehensively summarized and compared in their sensitivity, sensing technologies, applicable biological platforms, and integrative readouts. These well-developed biosensors are promising for facilitating the clinical utility and commercialization of point-of-care diagnostics. It is anticipated that mental healthcare can be gradually improved in multiple perspectives, from innovations of psychiatric biosensors in terms of biometric elements, transducing principles, and flexible readouts, to the construction of “Big-Data” networks used to share intractable psychiatric indicators and cases.