Genetic testing for psychiatric disorders - where are we heading?

Abstract

Until recently, considering genetic testing for patients with a psychiatric disorder was not a clinically relevant issue mainly due to ambiguous data and rather small effect sizes of the identified variants. However, the identification of rare, risk-associated copy number variants with relatively large effect sizes might shift that view. This presentation will provide an overview on genetic risk factors that might be appropriate for routine clinical diagnostics. Furthermore, the pros and cons of adopting genetic testing for psychiatric patients (e.g. genome-wide chromosomal microarray analysis for patients with schizophrenia) will be discussed.