Ep 2: Could an algorithm end the trial-and-error approach to mental health treatment?

Getting the right mental health treatment for you is often a game of trial and error – if one treatment doesn’t work, you’ll try another, and another, and another… People can wait months, sometimes even years, before they’re given a treatment that’s the right fit. It’s something that Mark Brown, mental health advocate and blogger, knows only too well.

After he was diagnosed with bipolar II he struggled to find the right combination of medication and therapy that worked for him – leaving him waiting years without the right help. We speak to Mark Brown about his experience and the researcher who’s aiming to transform how we select treatments – MQ-funded researcher Zach Cohen. Zach and his colleagues are creating and testing an algorithm which aims to predict which treatment option is right for a particular person.

If this works – doctors could have the tools to be able to select the right mental health treatment for a patient first time.

This episode is brought to you by MQ: Transforming Mental Health, the new major mental health research charity. Find out more about MQ’s work here: https://www.mqmentalhealth.org