Psychiatric Genetic Counseling: Next Steps

Excerpt

The world's first specialist psychiatric genetic counseling clinic opened in 2012. Despite ample evidence that psychiatric genetic counseling produces excellent outcomes for patients, even in the absence of any genetic testing, this service is still not widely available clinically despite efforts to train practitioners in the delivery of this intervention. Patients could benefit now from the delivery of psychiatric genetic counseling (even in the absence of testing), and we have an ethical duty to consider how to ensure that the infrastructure is in place to ensure optimal outcomes for patients. This is particularly important as we move closer toward the clinical application of genetic testing in the context of psychiatric conditions. It is important to consider how such testing might be deployed and to ensure that any testing is delivered according to the established practices for psychiatric genetic counseling that produce the best patient outcomes. This chapter reviews evidence that patients benefit from psychiatric genetic counseling and discusses the barriers to its broader implementation.