Most psychiatrists agree genetic testing would improve prescribing, but very few are trained to actually use it.
Pharmacogenomic testing can predict how a patient metabolizes specific antidepressants before they start taking them. It's designed to reduce the trial-and-error cycle that currently defines psychiatric prescribing, where patients often spend months cycling through medications that either don't work or produce significant side effects.
Genotype-guided prescribing has shown improved remission rates compared to usual care, and 80 to 90% of clinicians agree the testing is valuable. But only 10 to 20% report feeling trained or confident enough to use it routinely. Neither the technology nor the evidence seems to be the bottleneck. The implementation infrastructure likely plays a much bigger role: clinical training, workflow integration, standardized guidance on when and who to test.
For a field that has arguably struggled more than most with matching the right treatment to the right patient, the fact that a concrete, available tool is sitting largely unused is definitely worth addressing.
www.frontiersin.org/journals/pha...
