Personalized Mental Health Research, referring to the selection of a treatment best suited for an individual patient, involves the integration and translation into clinical practice of several new technologies from a range of fields such as neuroscience, genomics, deep clinical phenotyping, measurement-based assessments, and bioinformatics. The scope is much broader than indicated by the terms “genomic” or “precision psychiatry,” as many nongenomic factors are taken into consideration in developing personalized psychiatry. In addition, despite considerable advances that have taken place in molecular biology and biotechnology, fields that form the basis for personalized mental health, personalized mental health still requires much development to become a viable clinical option.
The concept of personalized mental health that forms the basis of research in the Department and beyond brings the four pillars of personalized medicine to the field of Mental Health: Prevention, Prediction, Personalization, and Participation. With this approach, the fundamental research and clinical questions and requirements for personalized mental health will be addressed from a research as well as a clinical perspective.
The research approach includes methodologies and their extensive development in basic science methodologies (e.g., genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics), systems biology, bioinformatics, and prediction modelling as well as innovative clinical trials and complex and digitalised phenotypic underpinnings in regard to clinical disease and response to treatment relevant for personalized mental health.
