Today is World Mental Health Day. The goal is to raise awareness about mental health around the world.
In the U.S. about 1 in 5 adults experience mental illness annually.
Approximately 300 million people suffer from depression
According to the National Alliance on Mental Health, about 1 in 25 struggle with a serious mental illness.
Below are statistics on how mental health issues affect Americans:
1 in 5 (or 43.8 million) adults experience mental illness in a given year.
1 in 25 (or 10 million) adults experience a serious mental illness.
1 in 100 (or 2.4 million) live with schizophrenia.
2.6% (or 6.1 million) of Americans have bipolar disorder.
6.9% (or 16 million) suffer from severe depression.
18.1% (or 42 million) live with an anxiety disorder.
90% of those who die by suicide have an underlying mental illness.
And yet:
Only 41% of adults with a mental health condition received help and less than 50% of children 8-15 received mental health services.
Only 36.9% of those suffering from anxiety receive treatment.
Less than 20% of Americans with moderate depressive symptoms sought help from a medical professional.
And 4% of young adults with self-reported mental health needs forego care.
While the statistics might seem discouraging, there are a number of ways to get help if you or a loved one is struggling with a mental health condition.
Medication can be an important part of the treatment of a mental illness, but finding the right medication at the right dose, for each individual, can take time and may cause harmful side effects.
In The Mental Health Clinician, it states over the past 3 decades, new psychotropic medications have been developed in hopes of improving outcomes such as medication adherence, tolerability, safety, and efficacy. A motivating factor for this has been consistently low reported remission rates in mood disorders with first-line treatment options.
According to the online publication, approximately 40% of treated patients will experience complete remission. In an effort to improve outcomes, mental health pharmacogenomics may play a role in improving outcomes by enhancing decision making in medication selection and treatment strategy. With improved access to genetic testing, future goals within mental health should include providers maintaining a well-rounded understanding of pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties.
Pharmacogenetics and Mental Health: Pharmacogenetics aligns current and future medications with each persons unique genetic profile. We know pharmacogenetics isn’t the “end all, be all” but it is another tool that can be used to help clinicians know the right drug, at the right dose, for the right person.
According to the NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health), less than 30% of depressed patients responded adequately to their initial antidepressant.
One thing a patient with mental health can’t afford, is “trial and error” prescribing. Pharmacogenetics testing allows healthcare professionals to identify patients who might experience adverse effects from antidepressant or antipsychotic medications and help to improve adherence.
One benefit from pharmacogenetic testing is to identify patients who rapidly metabolize medications, also known as ultra-rapid metabolizers. Test results will guide prescribing letting providers know what kind of dose that individual should be taking.
PGx Medical travels the country educating and implementing pharmacogenetics in the field of aging services. Despite the FDA’s “black box warning” of the potentially fatal side effects of antipsychotics for people suffering from dementia, these powerful drugs are too often used as a means of sedating elderly nursing home residents with dementia, as a substitute for appropriate care
Mental Health Illness has no limits. An estimated 1 in 4 Americans over the age of 18 suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder each year.
Today as we bring awareness to these statistics all over the world, let’s stop and think about the available ways to help, support and treat those affected.
For more information on pharmacogenetics, contact: PGx Medical, info@pgxmed.com or 405-509-5112.
On Friday’s we will post new and relevant information regarding Pharmacogenetics. We hope you will find this useful and pass along to colleagues. If you should have any questions or would like to request education or schedule a webinar regarding pharmacogenetics, please feel free to reach out to us at PGx Medical, info@pgxmed.com or 405-509-5112.
How is pharmacogenetics affecting the efficacy of medical treatment?
Pharmacogenomics can help doctors pick the right treatment option and dose for each patient. photo source: nigms.nih.gov
Your genes determine your hair and eye color, they also play a key role in how medications work in your body.
Currently, providers base the majority of their drug prescriptions on factors, such as a patient’s age, weight, sex, and liver and kidney function. Researchers have identified genetic variations that influence how people respond. When using a pharmacogenetic test result, providers can use this information to select the best medication and identify people who need an unusually high or low dose.
Pharmacogenetics looks at variations in genes for proteins that influence drug responses. These proteins include a number of liver enzymes that convert medications into their active or inactive forms. Even small differences in the genetic sequences of these enzymes can have a big impact on a drug’s safety or effectiveness.
Anticoagulants are one of the most frequently prescribed medications in elderly patients.
Polypharmacy is a growing concern in the elderly population
Some common cardiovascular disorders in older adults have a relationship to thrombosis, including ischemic heart disease, atrial fibrillation, valvular disease, and atherosclerotic vascular disease.
Thrombophilia (sometimes hyper coagulability or a prothrombotic state) is an abnormality of blood coagulation that increases the risk of thrombosis (blood clots in blood vessels). Such abnormalities can be identified in 50% of people who have an episode of thrombosis (such as deep vein thrombosis in the leg) that was not provoked by other causes.
Older adults represent a patient population at high thromboembolic risk, but also at high hemorrhagic risk. Physicians have a tendency to underuse anticoagulants in the elderly, most likely because of underestimation of thromboembolic risk and overestimation of bleeding risk.
Despite the stroke risk being much higher in the elderly population, the presence of associated comorbidities and accompanying polypharmacy leads to physicians’ being less eager to initiate anticoagulation therapy in the elderly, despite the greater absolute stroke risk reduction by doing so.
Another consideration in deciding on anticoagulation therapy is the elderly patients’ propensity to fall. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every 11 seconds an older adult is treated in the emergency room for a fall; every 19 minutes, an older adult dies from a fall.
One of the most compelling examples of potential benefits from pharmacogenetic testing is warfarin. Warfarin is a widely prescribed oral anticoagulant; for decades it has been used as standard drug to prevent and treat thrombotic events in patients with deep vein thrombosis, various hypercoagulable states, atrial fibrillation, surgical cardiac valve replacement, etc.
One of the major problems with its use in clinical practice is large inter-individual variation – patients differ in sensitivity to warfarin, hence the dose requirements vary widely (up to 20-fold). The consequences of over- or under-anticoagulation can be serious. In patients less sensitive than typical, the standard doses may be too low to achieve anticoagulation and therapeutic failure may occur, while in highly sensitive individuals the same doses may lead to serious adverse effects, such as hemorrhage.
PGx Medical is the trusted and experienced resource for the implementation of pharmacogenetics into the field of aging services. We work with LTC communities, clinics and pharmacies across the country educating and implementing pharmacogenetics into their day-to-day patient care.
For more information on education opportunities or implementing pharmacogenetics, contact:
Doctors are using pharmacogenomics to help determine what drugs will work, and which drugs to avoid.
not new, but more and more doctors are testing their patients to see how they process a variety of drugs from pain relievers to cardio medications. This will tell them who the medication will work for, who it won’t, and who might have a severe drug reaction and avoid that.
Doctors keep the genetic information on file so they can check to see if a drug will work or cause a problem before prescribing it. This helps take the guesswork out of prescriptions.
Pharmacogenomics not only helps with medications patients are currently taking, but will guide their future prescriptions and potentially save lives.
PGx Medical is the trusted and experienced resource for the implementation of pharmacogenetics into the field of aging services.
For more information, contact:
PGx Medical info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112
PGx Medical is proud to partner with senior communities across the country to help educate and implement pharmacogenetics.
As we work alongside long-term care communities, clinics and pharmacies, we have the privilege of receiving success stories on how pharmacogenetics has impacted residents, patients, family and staff.
PGx Medical is proud to partner with senior communities across the country to help educate and implement pharmacogenetics.
Below is an interview with our partner community in Virginia Beach:
Resident 1: We had one resident who came to us from a skilled facility. When she arrived, she was on an antipsychotic medication which we immediately look at as a red flag. We don’t want our residents on antipsychotics if we can avoid it. She was having some tearful episodes so we decided to do a pharmacogenetic test to see what the test results said because her family was reluctant to stop the medication. She was also on the medication for a diagnosis which was not really appropriate for the medication – the diagnosis was depression. We swabbed her and the test results came back that the medication Seroquel was in the black box for Use with Caution. Then we were able to go back to the family and talk to them about the test results and how that medication was probably not the best for her. So we started her on Effexor which was in the green category on the test report. The tearful episodes have decreased and she has made a really nice adjustment in the community.
The family was well educated and very involved in their loved ones life. They were nervous at first, but once we explained the test they were open to the test and didn’t want her on a medication that wasn’t effective for her. The family has been to a care plan meeting with our staff since the change and they seem happy with her progress.
Resident 2: We had another resident who came to us from a skilled facility. She had a significant stroke that affected her ability to verbally communicate. She was having numerous crying episodes along with significant frustrations with her inability to effectively communicate with us. This was very sad to watch and was extremely frustrating to her because she thought she was saying things that we could understand. She was having these episodes frequently so we decided to test her. After reviewing her test results, we discontinued Lexapro and we started Effexor which was in the green category on the pharmacogenetic test report. There has been a significant change in her behaviors. She is having episodes a lot less then she used to. They now happen every once in a while where they were happening a couple of times a week before we made the change. She just seems more content.
~Virginia Beach Senior Community Clinical Caregiver
PGx Medical is the trusted and experienced resource for implementation of pharmacogenetics into the field of aging services. For more information on pharmacogenetics, or contact us at info@pgxmed.com or 405-509-5112.
