Is precision psychiatry possible?

Anyone who has taken a psychiatric medication knows that the status quo in prescribing is a trial and error approach, with patients often cycling through an array of drugs to find the one that works for them.

But what if it didn’t have to be that way? On today’s podcast, host Jonah Comstock is joined by Dr Amit Etkin, founder and CEO of Alto Neuroscience, a recently IPO'd biotech that wants to bring precision medicine to psychiatry. But what do we mean when we talk about precision, especially in a discipline like mental health that has historically involved a lot of objectivity?

Etkin talks about the status quo in the industry, including the difficulties in proving effects and getting clearances for mental health drugs. And they discuss the challenges of identifying and using objective biomarkers in psychiatry.

The conversation also turns to the broader dichotomies in mental health, like psychology and biology, or drugs and talk therapy, and how they aren’t really dichotomies at all. Tune in for a discussion that just might change the way you think about mental health.

You can listen to episode 122 of the pharmaphorum podcast in the player below, download the episode to your computer or find it – and subscribe to the rest of the series in iTunes, Spotify, acast, Stitcher and Podbean.