Impact on psychological phenotyping and personalized medicine
depression, mental illness, outcome(s, anxiety
DISORDERS
The results of this study indicate that the use of psychological variables related to an intervention’s modality, mechanism(s) of action and outcome(s), can be used to characterize individuals into subgroups that are associated with mental health diagnoses and treatment outcomes. We demonstrated that incorporating key psychological markers of intervention and mechanism of change can identify cluster membership that has clinically-relevant impacts on outcomes for individuals with anxiety. The same approach can be applied to personalize treatment in other mental health conditions in which theoretical aspects of mechanism and treatment have already been identified (e.g. cognitive-behavioral therapy, depression and changes in cognitive patternsOur results demonstrate a potentially important advance for personalized medicine: development of individually-targeted treatment can be enhanced to optimize intervention effectiveness, and/or individualize treatment selection. For example, individuals in the ‘body/emotionally unaware’ cluster (cluster 2 in Study 1) that showed non-significant clinical outcome improvement relative to clusters 1 and 3 may need the incorporation of treatment components targeting interoceptive awareness skills (e.g. yoga) and/or may benefit from trying a different treatment modality (e.g. CBT). Additionally, it will be important to establish this subgroup’s response to medication treatment and/or whether these individuals are more generally psychologically treatment resistant, necessitating stepped-up care immediately upon the beginning of treatment (e.g. combining individual psychotherapy with a digital therapeutic).The results of these studies also contribute to simple, low-cost methods for the identification of individuals who may be at-risk for mental illness, thereby promoting the development of more effective prevention measures. For example, the higher anxiety clusters identified in both studies exhibited a greater proportion of participants with mental health disorders, and may particularly benefit from engaging in prevention measures (e.g. physical exercise, healthy eating habits