Individualized Treatment Strategy for Depressive Disorder

The goal of treatment for depressive disorders is complete remission of depressive symptoms with full recovery of social function and prevention of recurrence. However, a large proportion of patients do not experience symptomatic remission after the initial treatment, with even lower rates of remission in the longer treatment term. The main objective of individualized treatment applied in psychiatry is to improve precision in disease diagnosis, prognosis, treatment choices, and treatment response. Diverse approaches and techniques, such as genomics, epigenomics, other omics, neural circuit, and artificial intelligence are related to precision psychiatry. Using biology and computational psychiatry tools to find potential biomarkers, and based on precision psychiatry, patients considered to belong to the same endophenotype will be possible to receive biomarkers-based treatment and better prognosis. Especially in the choice of intervention, individualized treatment should be considered. In this review, we present the development of precise treatment in depressive disorders and introduce advances in several domains toward precision medicine and individualized treatment. We pay particular attention to biomarkers and the development of new technologies in depressive disorders, which will help disease complete remission and functional recovery, seek better lives for patients suffered with depressive disorders.