Clinical Psychology Brown Bag Series

Jay C. Fournier, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Individual Differences in Response to Treatments for Depression: Clinical Phenotypes and the Brain

Friday March 4, 2016

12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

The Martin Colloquium Room

4127 Sennott Square

Despite evidence that several treatments can reduce symptoms of depression, no treatment works equally well for everyone, and fewer than half of patients achieve remission following standard approaches.  One way to improve treatment effectiveness is to identify individual differences in biologically-based processes that may interfere with the mechanisms underlying a particular treatment’s effects – and then to develop novel strategies to correct those processes. In this talk I’ll discuss clinical phenotypes associated with differential response to treatments for depression, and I will present new findings linking relevant clinical phenotypes to neurobiological processes that may interfere with standard treatment approaches.