by Wanderer

Created on: November 17, 2007

Genetic Testing for Behavioral Diseases of the Mind

Genetic testing can do even more than it already has done by assisting doctors in diagnosing a patient's current medical condition and treatments. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have personalized disease treatment? All this can be done without looking at a person's entire genome, but only a subset of the genes in question, thereby leaving out any potential future diseases, hypothetical diseases.

Diseases of the mind, in particular, behavioral based diseases such as depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia cannot be tested by blood, body fluids or other medical diagnostic tests to definitively prove that a person has a disorder. Decisions are made based on the opinion and training of the psychologist and psychiatrist treating a patient, all the more reason to be educated and question some decisions that are being made by your medical provider. Several mental illnesses have genetic and familial links. Moreover, there are varying levels of severity of these diseases and varying pharmaceutical treatments that can be quite complex. Patients go through many rounds of medication, frustration, loss of time and quality of life. The current state of drug selection process at times seems very random.

With the advent of genetics, the possibility of genetic testing for psychological disease becomes a clear possibility. Genetics could identify one or more genes for mental illnesses. In addition, the genetic map might assist in treatment of these illnesses by identifying which variation of the illness is present, mild or severe. Certain genes may express a type of mental illness, for example bipolar disorder, and respond to certain drugs in a specific way. For example, a set of genes might show promise with Lithium treatment, and another might respond better to Depakote, and a third type of gene map might be treated best with a combination of medications, an antidepressant and mood stabilizer.

Given the number of children that being diagnosed with mental illness, we should demand to have more scientifically based diagnostic tests for mental illness that are less subject to human opinion and error. Behavior is a broad continuum. What might seem normal behavior to one person would seem extreme behavior to another. With genetic test we might rule out misdiagnoses in young children. A case in point is a recent story of a boy was diagnosed with a behavioral problem and treated with Prozac. He died after starting the treatment. His parents were held accountable for what happened. In the end they discovered that a variation in his metabolism gene caused him to have very slow metabolism. The drug was building up in his body and poisoning him. The dosage was too high or not even appropriate. Had he been genetically tested in advance, he might still be alive.

The field of psychology is still coming of age into modernity. Talk therapy seems to have advanced faster than the actual science and medicine end of therapy. Genetics may be the key to completing the picture, with possible improvement in medication selection. Genetic tests can be performed only on key portions of your genes that look for specific diseases, thereby protecting your privacy and the knowledge of future diseases.

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