What if we could take the guesswork out of mental health treatment?

For the millions worldwide facing psychiatric conditions and their families, the road to recovery can be long and uncertain. 

“A lot of what happens is kind of a one-size-fits-all, trial-and-error approach,” said Jordan Smoller, a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School. “We have treatments that are very helpful, but I don’t know ahead of time what’s going to work for you as an individual.”

In recent years, scientists have begun to develop targeted therapies that match treatment to a patient’s individual genetics, environment, and lifestyle. The approach, known as precision medicine, is already reshaping how clinicians treat cancer, heart disease, and other conditions.

Now, researchers like Smoller are exploring ways to apply the precision medicine model to another complex area of human health: neuropsychiatric disorders.  

On Thursday, April 10, Smoller will discuss “Bringing Precision Medicine to Psychiatry” during the next Maury Strauss Distinguished Public Lecture at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.

Recent advances in precision psychiatry are changing how clinicians understand, diagnose, and treat mental health conditions. For example, the approaches empower more precise identification of individual patient suicide risk and response to anti-depression medication.

Driving these advances are studies that examine the entire genetic blueprint of large groups of people with the goal of identifying genetic variants — small differences in DNA — linked with specific traits or diseases.

These studies have led to the development of polygenic risk scores, a single measure of an individual’s predisposition to a disorder. In psychiatry, the scores have been shown to predict illnesses like schizophrenia and depression.

Together with family medical history and lifestyle factors, these “robust biomarkers” can support clinicians in “predicting disease risk, reducing diagnostic uncertainty, forecasting prognosis, guiding treatment selection, informing genetic counseling, and validating prevention strategies,” according to Smoller.

Beyond this, technological advancements — including in artificial intelligence — have introduced new tools and datasets that present opportunities for refining diagnosis, identifying resilience factors, improving prevention and early intervention strategies, stratifying treatment, and targeting therapeutics to underlying causes.

“Thanks to the dedication of psychiatrists with strong scientific credentials like Jordan Smoller, early detection, prevention, and personalized treatments are becoming realities in clinical psychiatry,” said Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and Virginia Tech vice president for health sciences and technology. “His lecture presents an opportunity for the Roanoke community to share in the elucidation and implementation of this science, informing interventions that could reduce suffering and improve outcomes through proactive and personalized mental health care.”

Smoller is a practicing psychiatrist and director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and president of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics.

The program begins with a 5 p.m. reception on Thursday, April 10, followed by the lecture at 5:30 p.m. at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at 2 Riverside Circle in Roanoke. The lecture will also be livestreamed.

Through the support of late Roanoke businessman and philanthropist Maury Strauss, the lecture is free and open to the public.