MEDIA
Featured Highlights
Speaking of PSYCHOLOGY Podcast
by the American Psychological Association (APA)
January 2025
Precision mental health and personalized treatment, with
Leanne Williams, PhD and Zachary Cohen, PhD​
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Depression and anxiety look very different from one person to the next, and finding the right treatment can be a trial-and-error process. But researchers are working to change that. Leanne Williams, PhD, and Zachary Cohen, PhD, discuss the emerging field of precision or personalized mental health care; how advances in neuroimaging and big data are helping researchers identify subtypes of depression and anxiety and predict treatment response; and the challenges of bringing these methods from the research lab into treatment clinics.
Unlocking new insights into depression treatment through precision medicine
February 2026
GROUNDBREAKING RESEARCH IN THE FIELD OF MENTAL HEALTH:
EXPLORING A TARGETED APPROACH TO TREATING DEPRESSION
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Led by Drs. Leanne Williams and Laura Hack, and co-authored by Senior Associate Dean for Research and Stanford CTSA Principal Investigator Ruth O’Hara, PhD, a report in Nature Mental Health describes a recent clinical trial that aims to address the cognitive biotype of depression—a subset of patients who experience significant cognitive deficits alongside their depressive symptoms.
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“This study exemplifies what our CTSA grant is designed to enable—advancing precision medicine in mental health by uniting neurocognitive phenotyping, biomarker stratification, and rigorous trials using CTSA infrastructure,” explained Dr. O’Hara. “It accelerates tailored treatments for the cognitive biotype of depression and establishes a translational model for other neuropsychiatric conditions.”
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