Psychiatric Pharmacogenetic Testing

[Anonymous]

Has anyone had this testing done on their child? Was it helpful?

[Anonymous]

We just did it. Will get the results next week. I'm hopeful. Would love to hear if it helped others.

[Anonymous]

Are you talking about the genetic testing for what drugs are good for your kid? If so, we did it - genome or something like that. Very helpful for my DS and we used the results to pick a medication that is working for him.

[Anonymous]

Our psychiatrist (who is pretty good and I think pretty up on the research) said he did not recommend it at this point. He said there were too many variables w/r/t what makes a medication work for a kid, and that he didn't think they really knew what they were doing yet as far as analyzing the results. His opinion is that trial and error in the best way.

The genomic testing is probably the wave of the future for a lot of medical treatments, though.

[Anonymous]

We had good luck with it.

[Anonymous]

We found it very helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We found it very helpful.

I accidentally posted twice. I thought my first post timed out.

[Anonymous]

Also found it helpful. There is info on the report that can be easily interpreted, nothing like a "a way of the future". Your doc wants the patients to come back as many times as possible. Trial and error in this day and time is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

OP HERE. Thanks for the info. I posted yesterday about Dr. Fishtark and she does this type of testing. We don't have an appointment yet. For those who thought it was beneficial could you recommend your psychiatrist? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

I discussed this with a child psychiatrist friend (not my kid's psychiatrist so no skin in the game). The response was that it's expensive and not great science at this point. Useful for kids who have not gotten benefit from usual meds but not as an early step.

[Anonymous]

A very well respected pediatric geneticist told us the science is not there yet - so it is not very useful typically

[Anonymous]

Based on the responses, people who did the eval find it useful. People who did not cite secondhand knowledge. The report simply states (among other things) that u metabolize x faster and y slower, hence different dosage or different med.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also found it helpful. There is info on the report that can be easily interpreted, nothing like a "a way of the future". Your doc wants the patients to come back as many times as possible. Trial and error in this day and time is ridiculous.

I'm the PP that said my psychiatrist does not recommend it. I GUARANTEE that he is not saying that because he wants us to come back as many times as possible. He doesn't even notice when we forget to pay him (for months and months). He is pretty much the sweetest guy, and I don't think there's any way he could be Machiavellian about this stuff. I will add that we did not have a hard time finding a good fit for our child ... his response might be different if he was talking to a parent that was struggling to find something that worked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Based on the responses, people who did the eval find it useful. People who did not cite secondhand knowledge. The report simply states (among other things) that u metabolize x faster and y slower, hence different dosage or different med.

Isn't the most it can say is that people with your gene type metabolize tend to metabolize X faster? Not that you do? I think that's the issue -- there's so much we don't know about gene expression -- there are a lot of genes that aren't really active until they are turned on. I'm not that educated on this test, but that's my understanding of what the issue is.

[Anonymous]

22:46, could you share your psychiatrist with us?