Anyone who has unremitting depression and needs medication to deal with it knows that their psychiatrist uses an old, poor evaluation of drug effectiveness.

Roughly 3.8% of individuals are affected by depression. Among adults, 5% (4% male and 6% female) and 5.7% over 60 are affected. Around 280 million people across the globe suffer from depression. Approximately half as many women as males suffer from depression. Postpartum depression affects over 10% of expectant and new mothers globally.

Annually, about 700,000 individuals lose their lives as a result of suicide. Among people aged 15–29, suicide ranks as the fourth most common killer. Depression, therefore, presents a clear and present danger to life, and alleviating it must be one of our primary concerns in healthcare. But the means to effectively address it has been that old trial-and-error method which was the only way to know which meds worked for a specific patient. And there was also the issue of “washout” which too many healthcare providers failed to utilize before adding yet another med onto what the patient was taking.

What’s “washout?” Recent years have seen a dramatic rise in the use of polypharmacy in psychiatry. Possible factors include widespread prescription of psychotropic medications, potentiation of added drugs, availability of newer drugs, overconfidence in clinical trial results, and pressure to augment existing medications. Simply put, washout is the time needed for one drug to clear the body before another is added. It may not be used because there will be a period when the patient is not receiving medication as they wait for the washout to complete. Symptoms, therefore, may crop up again, and patient adherence is highly affected.

Not even the next generation of pharmaceuticals may have substantial benefits over their predecessors. The widespread use of many medications raises the possibility of additional safety concerns. Medication management practices nowadays hardly employ washout as a therapeutic technique. This raises serious concerns about “unknown” polypharmacy, in which an existing drug’s blood activity is maintained alongside the addition of a novel medicine. Regarding adverse effects and patient symptoms, how do the two medications interact when used together? It is playing with our body’s chemistry without knowing what’s happening. Are there AI algorithms to address this in healthcare offices? We are dealing with a high degree of organic chemistry here.

According to studies, the devastating and agonizing reality is that one out of ten Canadians may experience major depression at some point in their lives. There is no shortage of antidepressants on the market, but it may take trial and error to discover one that works.

Imagine a depressed patient dealing with the trial and error of multiple medications. Now, researchers are on the trail of new approaches to finding the best fit for medications for depressed patients.

It is not easy for the patient or the provider, but hope is on the horizon. The problem is the inaccessibility or high cost of adequate testing for antidepressant selection options. Of course, insurance reimbursement always plays a role in this decision, and in this case, that role could be deadly.

But that might soon change as pharmacogenomic testing becomes more popular. This test uses a person’s DNA to predict how well a medicine will work. How does it work? The video here will explain some of it and the work yet to be done regarding larger patient pools and genomic information from them.

In contrast to the present “one-size-fits-all” method, PGx (pharmacogenetics) testing can personalize primary care and construct a model for safer medication prescribing. There is encouraging evidence that PGx testing can improve medication efficacy while decreasing toxicity and adverse drug reactions, especially in psychiatry.

Pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics are two essential aspects with which most patients are unfamiliar, and we should have a basic idea of them. Pharmacodynamics examines a medicine’s biochemical and physiological consequences, while pharmacokinetics studies the body’s interaction with and impact on the outcome of an administered substance. This is the nexus of the ongoing research in this area.

Remission of depressive symptoms is significantly and modestly increased in people with major depressive disorder (MDD) when antidepressant medication is guided by pharmacogenomics. One study found that the severity of anxious and depressive symptoms decreased over time, suggesting a strong correlation with the therapeutic change guided by genetic testing.

DNA Testing Offers Hope

Certain CYP450 tests, such as CYP2D6 and CYP2C19, can help predict how your body will react to an antidepressant by analyzing your genetic makeup. But the tests analyze more than depressive disorders and have been found useful in a wide range of mental health issues.

Healthcare providers may be able to use the results of the Genomind Professional PGx genetic test to tailor better pharmacological treatment for individuals suffering from many mental health issues. The results of this genetic test are determined by analyzing 24 genes and their relation to 130 medications used for multiple conditions such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, ADD/ADHD, PTSD, OCD, addiction, substance abuse, chronic pain, and substance misuse.

Scientific research is opening new ways for prescribing and diagnosing. If DNA samples can assist in the selection of appropriate medications for specific mental disorders, it promises relief for millions. Not only will it provide speedier medication results, but it will most definitely affect those who have become hopeless and decide that life is no longer tenable. We can decrease the number of people committing suicide as we offer help with multiple disorders. But how can we do it if cost ties our hands?

Insurance corporations should know the financial benefit to these corporations when less use of their plans is needed because disorders can be handled quickly and possibly prevent hospitalizations. It may be a matter of finance, but what is a life worth, and don't corporations wish to increase their corporate dividends to stockholders? Faster resolution of mental health and other disorders via innovative DNA testing would seem to solve a multiplicity of concerns of both patients and corporations alike.