The role of free radicals and antioxidants is receiving constant attention in relation to disease processes and reaches into many aspects of medicine. As of February 28, 2011 a search on PubMed indicates there are approximately 1400 references to psychiatry coupled with antioxidants. In addition, there are 550 papers related to cognition / behavior and 239 related to schizophrenia. These articles are primarily concerned with the use of predictive biomarkers and the effect of multiple antioxidants administered for therapeutic intervention. There is increasing evidence that oxidative stress is a causative, or at least a supportive factor in several disorders affecting abnormal behavior. Oxidative stress also plays a regulatory role in transcription, signal transduction, gene expression and mitochondrial function, membrane trafficking and post-synthetic damage.

Anna Dietrich-Muszalska is a professor of psychiatry and head of the Department of Biological Psychiatry of the Chair of Experimental and Clinical Physiology, Medical University of Lodz, Poland, where she obtained her PhD in psychiatry, her MD specializing in psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry, and received her training in clinical psychiatry. She worked in the Clinic of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry prior to working for several years in the Clinic of Affective and Psychotic Disorders, Medical University of Lodz. She is also head of the Centre of Prevention and Treatment Addiction of Narcotics in Lodz. Her research interest concerns the development of new and improved treatments of schizophrenia. Her clinical research focuses on understanding the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and includes clinical, pharmacological, and neurochemical aspects of schizophrenia. She is especially interested in the oxidative stress and oxidative and nitrosative changes in schizophrenic patients and the relationship between drug addiction and psychiatric disorders. Dr. Dietrich-Muszalska has published more than seventy-four research articles and book chapters.Ved Chauhan is head of the Cellular Neurochemistry Laboratory at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities (IBR), Staten Island, NY. Dr. Chauhan received his PhD in biochemistry from the Postgraduate Institute for Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India. After working as a research associate in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, he joined IBR as a research scientist. Dr. Chauhan has published more than eighty-three research articles in peer-reviewed journals. His work includes biochemical abnormalities in autism, the role of phosphoinositides in the activation of protein kinase C, and factors affecting the fibrillization of amyloid beta-protein. He has been recipient of research grants from National Institutes of Health, Alzheimer's Association, Autism Speaks and Autism Research Institute. Dr. Chauhan is associate editor of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and an editorial board member of International Archives of Medicine. He has organized and chaired several national and international symposia on autism.Sylvain Grignon is a professor of psychiatry, physiology and biophysics at Sherbrooke University, Québec, Canada. Dr. Grignon received his MD certification in psychiatry and his  PhD in neuroscience at Marseilles University, France, as well as postdoctoral training in neuroscience at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., and in pharmacology at Marseilles University. He is currently full professor and research head of the Department of Psychiatry at Sherbrooke. In parallel with clinical duties-including medical chief of the psychotic disorders program-he maintains an active research program whose overarching aim is to understand how oxidative stress impacts pathophysiological processes in major psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder. Dr. Grignon has published more than fifty original papers and book chapters.