Taking The Guesswork Out of Psychiatric Medicine

I stumbled across the following:

Researchers with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto said Tuesday they are "months away" from being able to personalize medical treatments for mentally ill patients by using genetics and brain imaging tests.

The project, called the neuroIMAGENE initiative, has been seven years in the making and will involve two evaluations — one that will use DNA testing, the other that will measure brain activity — to determine how a mentally ill patient will react to certain medications and to prescribe the best mix for treatment.

If it pans out, it will be an enormous benefit to recipients of psychotropic drugs, allowing them to avoid numerous trials of various drugs and drug mixtures "to see what works", and potentially allowing the selection of medications that minimize both dose and side effects.