Personalized medicine in psychiatry: ethical challenges and opportunities

Pharmacogenomic developments hold promise for personalized medicine in psychiatry with adjusted therapeutic doses, predictable responses, reduced adverse drug reactions, early diagnosis, and personal health planning. The prospects are exciting, but at the same time, these new techniques stand faced with important scientific, ethical, legal, and social challenges that need to be met in order for the scientific advances to be responsibly applied. This review discusses the ethical balance between challenge and opportunity of personalized medicine in psychiatry under the aspects of adequacy, cost:benefit ratio, and therapeutic equity. It is argued that the promising nature of these therapeutic possibilities makes it all the more important to avoid exaggerating the expectations, and that a sophisticated social infrastructure needs to be developed in order to ensure the realistic and responsible application of personalized medicine in psychiatry.