How Hormones Affect Mood for Women
Feeling sad or depressed? Maybe it’s not you—maybe it’s your hormones. Here’s how puberty, pregnancy, post-partum, and menopause can affect mental health.
A Parent’s Guide to Anxiety and OCD in Children
Children can suffer from anxiety and OCD just like adults, but there are differences. Learn about anxiety and OCD in children here.
Ethnopsychopharmacology – Ethnicity and Mental Health Treatment
Ethnopsychopharmacology is the study of how ethnicity affects mental health treatment. Learn more about it to find out if it can help you.
A Beginner’s Guide to Depression & Genetic Testing for Depression Medication
In a given year 16.1 million American adults experience major depressive disorder. Learn about depression on the Genomind Blog.
7 Signs You Might Benefit from Anti-Anxiety Medication
If talk therapy and a healthy lifestyle aren’t enough to manage your anxiety, it may be time to ask about anti-anxiety medication. Watch for these signs.
4 Ways Modern Medicine Is Helping Ease the Veteran Suicide Crisis
Hope for easing the suicide crisis among U.S. military veterans has grown in recent years, thanks in part to advances in treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and other mental health conditions veterans bring home from the battlefield. That’s important news, because the number of veterans who die by suicide is sobering. According to […]
Risk Stratification Definition, and How It Affects Patients’ Care
You’re probably familiar with the lab tests and in-office screening procedures clinicians use to assess your current clinical conditions or your risk of developing certain diseases. But that’s just a starting point for the next steps in your care. Risk stratification definition Through a process called risk stratification, clinicians can systematically categorize patients’ health risk […]
How Pharmacogenomics Has Improved Patients’ Lives Through Personalized Prescriptions
Did you know that your DNA is 99.9% the same as your neighbor’s? So what makes you you? That remaining 0.1% can influence everything from your height, weight, and hair color. It can also affect how your body reacts to and breaks down certain types of medications. The emerging scientific field of pharmacogenomics combines pharmacology […]
How Your Genes Can Help Clinicians and Cardiologists Keep Your Heart Healthy
If your doctor has prescribed multiple drugs for your heart condition — maybe you recently suffered a heart attack or deal with angina — it’s likely that your prescription regimen is entirely different from that of your neighbor. That’s because you are you, thanks to your genes, and you might reap different rewards from certain […]
4 Hidden Costs of Aging and How You Can Offset Them
Think about the last time you were at the supermarket. If you felt like you were the youngest person there, it’s possible that you were. The U.S. population is aging rapidly. Currently, there are more than 54 million older adults (age 65 and up), and by 2040 that number is expected to balloon to 80 […]
Medication Adherence: Why It’s Important to Patients
When patients fill a prescription, it doesn’t always mean that they’ll follow through on the important part: taking it. Taking medication as prescribed is called medication adherence – and it’s a practice too often neglected. Turns out, about half of all patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure don’t take their […]
How Food Affects Your Mood
Today, the rapidly growing field of nutritional psychiatry is finding many connections between the food we eat and the types of bacteria that live in our guts which affect how we feel
How Precision Medicine Could Revolutionize Older Adult Care
Part of the reason you’re living longer is your physical and social environment — your home, neighborhood, and community — notes the World Health Organization.1 Eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, and refraining from smoking all contribute to a longer life span as well. Doctors prescribe medications to their patients to treat illnesses and with […]
How to Make the Most of Your Annual Medication Review
If you’re an older adult, one of the most frustrating aspects of everyday life may be staying on top of all those medications you’ve been prescribed. Making sure they’re in the right slot in your pillbox can be frustrating. In some cases, because you’ve been prescribed so many different drugs, you may wonder if you […]
Explained: What Is Genetic Testing for Mental Health Medications?
Pharmacogenetics (PGx) is a science that assesses your genes to determine how you’ll respond to specific medications. Here’s how it can help mental health.
What Is Pharmacovigilance, and Why Is It So Important to Patients’ Health?
Some of the medications you’ve been prescribed could put you at risk of experiencing an adverse drug event (ADE), or a situation where you might be harmed by a medication.1 As one example, one of your prescriptions could be interacting with another one (drug-drug interaction), or even your DNA could be interacting with one of […]
How Genetic Testing for ADHD Medication Can Personalize Treatment
There are many ADHD medications, but children don’t respond to them the same way. Here’s what genetics, especially the COMT and CYP450 genes, can tell us.
The Life-Threatening Mental Illness in Older Adults No One Is Talking About
We’ve all experienced times in our lives when we’ve felt blue. But for some, those feelings can be intense and last for several weeks or longer, signaling a medical condition known as clinical depression.1 Although clinical depression affects people of all ages, adults over the age of 65 are at an increased risk, says Patrick […]
11 Questions to Ask Your Doctor Before Starting or Switching to a New Medication
If you take one prescription medication, you’ll know that there’s a dose and a frequency with which you’re supposed to take it. Normally, it’s easy to keep track of one prescription, no problem. Now, multiply that by five, 10, or more. Taking multiple drugs at a time can often be unnerving. You might worry about […]
Managing Multiple Comorbidities More Easily
Over the past two years, the term “comorbidity” has been used more and more in public health conversations, thanks in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of the pandemic, you’ve learned that people with comorbidities — or more than one pre-existing medical condition at the same time (such as diabetes and cancer) […]
How to Avoid Medication Errors: A Guide
Thousands of Americans die as a result of medication errors on an annual basis — and in many cases, the situation could have been avoided if the proper precautions had been taken. In fact, a recent report published in Stat Pearls puts the medication error death toll at between 7,000 and 9,000 people per year.1 […]
Avoiding Falls: 8 Helpful Tips for Older Adults and Their Caregivers
If you’re a caregiver or just enjoy spending quality time with your parents or grandparents, these statistics may be cause for concern: Falls are a major problem among older adults (age 65 and up) and can lead to serious injury or death.1 In fact, falls are the top cause of injury and death from injury […]
Benefits of Precision Medicine and How It Can Help Keep You Healthy
Many long-term care facilities, large private practices, and health care networks have welcomed the concept of precision medicine. But ask the average person what precision medicine is and you might get more than a few blank stares. In fact, according to a survey of Americans by the Personalized Medicine Coalition, 66% of respondents had never […]
Meds Made Easier: 5 Tips for Tackling a Complex Medication Regimen
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 70% of American adults ages 40 to 79 have used at least one prescription medication in the last 30 days.1 That number may not be too surprising. But this one might be: More than 22% of U.S. adults have used five or more prescription medications […]
Drug-Gene & Drug-Drug Interactions: How Science Could Help Personalize Your Treatment Plan
If you’re taking more than one prescription medication, you’re not alone — and if you’re older, your medicine cabinet could be at capacity. More than 40 percent of older adults take five or more prescription medications, and nearly 20 percent take 10 or more.1 The more prescription medications you take, the more likely you could […]
The Power of Positive Emotions — and the Upside to Negative Ones
Think of your emotions like you would the weather: Somedays, it’s all sunshine and positivity, while others, it’s dark and gloomy. There’s a lot of in-between too. Those positive emotions can feel great, and they’re great for your health too. For example, positive emotions, especially hopefulness, have been linked to lower levels of coronary heart […]
Antipsychotics: What You Need to Know
For decades, clinicians have been prescribing patients antipsychotic medications. Unfortunately, use of these medications has long been associated with myths, stigmas, and stereotypes. As the name implies, conventionally, people believe that anyone taking antipsychotics must have psychosis (which refers to a loss of contact with reality; typically involving delusions and/or hallucinations)1 or schizophrenia. Also among […]
The Life of a Sample Inside The Genomind Lab
Pharmacogenetic testing uses a simple, pain-free genetic cheek swab test. Learn more about happens after a clinician collects a sample.
What Are ADEs (Adverse Drug Events)?
Most people take their prescription medications without too much thought. You assume the medications are going to work and that your care team has prescribed you the right ones to help solve your medical needs. But for many people who take one or more prescription medications at a time, taking them could mean danger is […]
Myths About Mental Health
Here’s a staggering fact: Mental illness affects tens of millions of Americans annually, and we’ve seen the number of mental health concerns grow over the past several years. As an example, one study found 8.5% of participants were experiencing symptoms of depression back in 2017-2018. But a couple of years later, thanks in large part […]
