Verified by 
As a carrier of a genetic mutation (one that has has no primary relation to mental health), I know how exploring a genetic landscape can either empower a person or open a big ol’ can of worms.
If you can take the information and run with it--have prophylactic treatment, proceed with caution when starting a family--good! If all it offers you is sleeplessness and helpless worry, then perhaps ignorance really is bliss. (I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes a cliche is not just a cliche!)
The genotyping I refer to in the title of this piece is not the kind that maps the body for those genetic blips that can or will eventually cause grave mischief.
It’s a kind of study, and a relatively new one, of a body’s metabolic function in relation to medications. It presumes that a person has, or will have, a need for pharmacological interventions.
Whether it’s heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or bipolar disorder--if you have it, you’ll probably need to take drugs to control it.
But what if you are an atypically fast, or slow, metabolizer of drugs of a certain class? It turns out human metabolism is not a “one size fits all” kind of thing. If you process a drug in class A too fast, it passes through without any effect. And if you process drugs in that same class too slowly, you can get socked with a potentially toxic dosage, even if you’re following your doctor’s instructions.
Yikes! Not great if you or your loved one depend on those meds for comfort or even survival.
This whole business of testing a person’s genes to see exactly how best to treat their disorder(s) was a big surprise to me. Who knew? Yet, I know of departments in certain hospitals that will not take in a patient for surgery or other treatment without having the results of this genetic testing in hand. You can understand why: if they're going to treat your heart disease or cancer with medications that won’t help and may even hurt, then they're not doing their job. And you, if you survive to tell the tale, are not going to be happy about it. To say the least.
Readers, you might be wondering if I’m a paid shill for some company that does this work. I am not. (I’m not even going to name the company that did my son’s testing. Use the Googlemeister to learn more, if you want.) I know about it because Ben’s therapeutic school requires its students to have this testing done. For various reasons, it took us longer than it probably should have to get Ben tested.
When we got the results we learned that a mood stabilizer he had been on for, oh, about five or six years? is made of a chemical compound HIS BODY CANNOT ABSORB.
In other words, we’d been paying for the equivalent of sugar pills. And he’d been treated with a drug that did him no good--and possibly some harm. At the very least, it may have prolonged a hell of a lot of anguish. There are other drugs we now know to avoid, either because they are also the equivalent of placebos to him, or because they could actively do him harm.
Now, please note that I am no expert in genetics or medical ethics or any other related field. (I am waiting for my various honorary MDs to arrive in the mail, however. Because I know way more about this stuff than any mere mortal/writer/English professor should EVER have to know.)
No doubt there is healthy debate about this form of testing in the biomedical universe, but I, personally, am all for it--and if you're parenting a child or teen with a mental OR somatic illness of some kind, you may want to discuss the matter with your kid's clinicians
All I can tell you is, I’m delighted to have a pharmacological roadmap for treating my beloved son. (Less so that our insurance does not cover the procedure, but that's a rant for another day. Lemme know when you have a few idle hours, and I'll have at it.;)
Oh--and I am going to speak with my doctor this week, to arrange for my own genetic mapping. Not, this time, to find out if I carry a deadly gene, like the one that killed my sister, my grandmother, and several other women in my family. But just so I know if the medications I’m on, or the ones I may take in the future, are actually going to make me better.
