Personalized Medicine for Depression: Can We Match Patients With Treatments?

A conceptual model for identifying and evaluating evidence relevant to personalizing treatment for depression is described, finding that the inability to match patients with treatments implies that systematic follow-up assessment and adjustment of treatment are more important than initial treatment selection.

Abstract

While individuals vary widely in response to specific depression treatments, the variability remains largely unpredictable. Future research should focus on identifying true moderator effects and should consider how response to treatments varies across episodes. At this time, our inability to match patients with treatments implies that systematic follow-up assessment and adjustment of treatment are more important than initial treatment selection.