How New Technologies are Shaping the Future of Depression Treatment

How will emerging technologies shape the landscape of depression interventions? In the final part of this series on the future of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and depression treatment, Julie Carbray, PhD, PMHNP-BC, PMHCNS-BC, APRN, and Kristian Dambrino, DNP, PMHNP-BC, discuss how newer technologies are impacting the processes of diagnosing and treating depression. With a particular focus on precision psychiatry, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), Carbray and Dambrino wrap up their discussion with an insightful exploration of how these recent advancements may better equip clinicians to provide personalized, faster acting, and effective care for their patients.

Catch up on part 1: The Role of NMDA and AMPA Receptors in Rapid-Acting Antidepressant Treatments

Catch up on part 2: Clinical Implications and Potential Benefits of Newer Treatments for Depression

For more news and expert insights on depression, visit Depression Care360.

Read the Transcript

Julie Carbray, PhD, PMHNP-BC: Hi, I'm Julie Carbray, nurse practitioner and clinical professor of nursing and psychiatry at the College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and the College of Nursing at the University of Illinois, Chicago. 

Kristian Dambrino, DNP, PMHNP-BC: I'm Kristian Dambrino, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and founder of Dambrino Consulting and Wellness, and I practice in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Carbray: Kristian, other promises in the treatment of our patients with depression, especially patients with treatment-resistant depression, are AI biomarkers, machine learning, all sorts of new technologies that might help us with precision psychiatry. I know we keep talking about precision psychiatry, but it's been a minute. We still keep waiting to get the right technology to the patient to appropriately match what they need to not only reduce symptoms for a short amount of time, but for longer times and improve quality of life. So, what are some promising things in the pipeline when you think about AI or other technologies that might offer promise for our patients?

Dambrino: AI is very new for all of us. It's so interesting. We all want to know all about it. It's moving so quickly. It's almost moving faster and sort of beyond human scale at this point. But we can conceptualize it like prognosis, AI and prognosis prediction, diagnosis, treatment, and then also in development of medications. So, that's really interesting. 

There are medications where we may validate that there is a biomarker that could be predictive of someone's response to a medication and so there have been trials to show that that's possible, and we still have a lot to learn about that, but it would be really interesting if we could approach psychiatry less from a 1-size-fits-all approach and also considering the individual person and if we can look at even medication development in this way, we may be able to treat depression more quickly.

Carbray: Yeah, I know that there are some studies showing promise looking at different proteins that may be genetically linked towards an improved response to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) versus other agents. There's a lot of new discovery that may help us to pinpoint the right medication treatment for our patient. Also, the type of depression, whether it's a cycling type of depression or a depression that presents with a lot of anhedonia, per se. So that's the promise of new technologies in AI is really refining what it is that is coming to us with our patient needs and then how we might respond may also be better tuned because, as you said, 1 medication, 1 treatment, will not do well across all of our patients. We really have to be very specific to what that patient needs. 

Dambrino: Right, absolutely.

Carbray: Kristian, thank you so much for this great conversation about treatment-resistant depression and building hope for our patients about new mechanisms of action. 

Dambrino: Absolutely. Thank you. I've enjoyed meeting with you and I've really enjoyed learning as well.

Julie Carbray, PhD, PMHNP-BC, PMHCNS-BC, APRN, holds her PhD (93) and Master of Science (88) degrees from Rush University, Chicago and her Bachelor of Science (87) degree from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. A clinical professor of psychiatry and nursing at the University of Illinois Chicago and the director of the Pediatric Mood Disorder Clinic, she has been practicing as a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner for over 35 years.

Kristian Dambrino, DNP, PMHNP-BC, is a board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and the founder of Dambrino Wellness, an outpatient mental health practice in Nashville, TN. She received her Doctor of Nursing Practice from Belmont University College of Nursing, with a focus on innovative global nursing partnerships in Indonesia. Having worked extensively with severe and persistent mental illness in community mental health and crisis settings, Dambrino embraces a trauma-informed, evidence-based prescribing model for her patients.

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