Improving Mental Health with Genomics: A Smarter, Personalized Approach

If you’ve ever felt like traditional mental health treatments don’t fully work for you, you’re not alone. Mental health isn’t one-size-fits-all—and your genetics play a major role in how your brain responds to stress, neurotransmitters, and even medications.

For too long, treatment for anxiety, depression, and mood disorders has been trial and error. But now, genomics is changing the game, giving us clear, science-backed insights into the root causes of mental health challenges.

Here’s how understanding your DNA can help you improve mental health with precision, not guesswork.

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1. Your Genes Influence Brain Chemistry—Know What’s Driving Your Symptoms

Ever wondered why some people handle stress effortlessly while others experience persistent anxiety or depression? Your neurotransmitters—like serotonin, dopamine, and GABA—are influenced by your genetics.

Key genetic factors that impact mental health:

🧬 MTHFR & Folate Metabolism: If you have MTHFR variants, your body struggles to convert folic acid into methylfolate, which is essential for mood regulation & neurotransmitter production.

🧬 COMT & Dopamine Processing: Your COMT gene affects how quickly your body breaks down dopamine—if it’s too fast, you may struggle with motivation & focus; too slow, and you may feel anxious & overstimulated.

🧬 BDNF & Brain Resilience: BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) helps with neural repair & mood stability—low levels are linked to depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline.

Why this matters:

Instead of assuming one-size-fits-all solutions work for you, genomics helps pinpoint why your brain functions the way it does, so you can take targeted action.

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2. The Right Supplements for YOUR Brain—Not Just Generic Advice

Not everyone responds the same way to supplements for mental health. Your genes determine which nutrients and compounds your brain actually needs.

Example of how genomics guides supplement choices:

💊 Have an MTHFR mutation? You likely need methylfolate instead of standard folic acid to support neurotransmitter balance.

💊 Struggle with high stress & anxiety? If your COMT gene clears dopamine too slowly, adaptogens like rhodiola or phosphatidylserine may be better than stimulants.

💊 BDNF variants impacting mood & resilience? Exercise, omega-3s, and curcumin can help boost brain plasticity & emotional stability.

Instead of throwing random supplements at the problem, genomics removes the guesswork and gives precision recommendations for your unique brain chemistry.

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3. Medication Side Effects? Your DNA May Be the Reason

Ever had an extreme reaction to an antidepressant? Or found that SSRIs don’t work for you? Your genetics affect how you metabolize psychiatric medications—which is why some drugs work great for one person but cause side effects in another.

🔬 Your CYP450 genes impact how you process medications—knowing your variants can predict whether you’ll:

✅ Metabolize a medication too fast (making it ineffective)

✅ Process it too slowly (causing side effects & toxicity)

✅ Need a specific type of antidepressant based on your brain chemistry

Bottom line: Instead of trial-and-error prescribing, a genomics-based approach can help your doctor choose the right medication the first time.

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4. Lifestyle Adjustments That Actually Work—Based on Your DNA

Not all mental health strategies work the same for everyone. Your DNA can tell you which lifestyle changes are most effective for your brain and mood stability.

🧘 Exercise & Mental Health: If you have BDNF variants, exercise isn’t just helpful—it’s critical for maintaining emotional balance.

☀️ Light Exposure & Circadian Rhythm: Some genes make you more sensitive to blue light, meaning light therapy or early sun exposure can have a bigger impact on mood.

🥑 Nutrition & Mental Health: Your genetics influence how well you absorb key nutrients like omega-3s, magnesium, and choline, which directly affect mood and cognitive function.

By aligning your lifestyle interventions with your DNA, you can get real, lasting improvements in mental health.

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5. The Future of Mental Health is Personalized—And It’s Here Now

For years, mental health care has been reactive and generalized—but genomics is revolutionizing treatment, making it personalized, precise, and effective.

✅ Identify genetic drivers of anxiety & depression

✅ Pinpoint the right nutrients, supplements & medications for YOUR brain

✅ Make data-driven lifestyle changes for long-term mental wellness

At IntellxxDNA, we bring clinician-guided genomics to the forefront of mental health care, so you and your provider can make smarter, science-backed decisions for your best brain health.

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Ready to take control of your mental health with precision?

Let us match you with an expert clinician who uses genomics to tailor treatment to your unique biology.

A guest post from our clients at Potomac Psychiatry:

I start with the premise that all human disease is genetic.
— Paul Berg, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate

At Potomac Psychiatry we always try to be on the forefront of personalized medicine. By using genomics to help with our clinical decision making, not only are we better able to choose appropriate medications, but we are better able to support our patients naturally with personalized nutrition and supplements, sometimes even allowing us to avoid medications. IntellxxDNA helps us optimize outcomes for everything from anxiety to ADHD to cognitive decline.

Genetic Tests Blueprint Better Mental Health

Why are genetic tests so crucial to blueprinting and building better mental health? As discussed in a prior blog, your DNA creates the information-system blueprint to build out your subatomic, atomic, and molecular mental health in every one of your 30 trillion human cells that influence your mental and physical health. A new genetic test identifies genetic variations that predispose you to “setting your brain on fire” and helps create the roadmap to extinguish that fire to improve mental wellness.

In this blog you will learn about…

• Why rates of mental illness are on the rise
• A new genetic test that creates better mental health through analyzing genetic variations that can be positively affected through the targeted use of gene-specific supplements
• Four genes that affect how your immune system functions, that predispose you to “setting your brain on fire,” and how you can “extinguish them” with specific supplements to improve mental health
• How your immune system and these “brain fire genes” predispose one to developing PTSD, Depression, Bipolar Disorder, and Alzheimer’s Disease
• How to obtain additional information on the role of genetic testing in Root Cause Psychiatry

Our Mental Health Ecosystem

More people than ever are struggling with mental health problems. Why? This is a question that my colleagues and I wrestle with daily. The answers to this question are complex, however there is one that remains quite simple: while the human genome has not materially changed for the last 50,000 years, our environment has altered dramatically, creating a profound effect on which of our genes are expressed, and which are suppressed. How?

As you can see from the mental health ecosystem infographic below, many of the environmental “roots” that affect how our genes are “turned on” or “turned off” have been created, or have dramatically changed, in the last few decades.

For example, over the past several decades we have witnessed increasing levels of environmental toxins, greater challenges getting a full night’s sleep, a Western diet with more processed foods and simple carbohydrates, and now a global pandemic. Amidst all of this turmoil, the exponential rise in the popularity of social media apps like Facebook, which launched less than 20 years ago, has only increased our levels of chronic stress and its effects on our immune system.

Ecosystem Stressors Set Your Brain on Fire

Each of these examples have one important thing in common, they modulate specific genes in your cells to produce increased levels of inflammatory proteins that circulate throughout your body and invade your brain to cause brain inflammation.

It’s not our species’ fault that our “hunter-gatherer world” genome can’t keep up with the fast-paced changes of life in the twenty-first century. However, we do have some control over how we can effectively influence that genome toward better mental health! The good news is that we can determine our personal vulnerabilities to debilitating brain inflammation through a brilliant new genetic test called IntellxxDNA™.

IntellxxDNA Testing Facilitates Root Cause Analysis with Supplement-Based Solutions

IntellxxDNA personalized genomic reports help psychiatrists understand a patient’s individual gene function, which leads to exceptionally powerful, individualized prevention and intervention strategies to blueprint and build better mental health. The best part about IntellxxDNA report is that the gene-targeted interventions include diet, lifestyle, and supplements that have been supported by numerous scientific studies; including their effective doses; leading to a personalized roadmap for optimizing your mental wellness.

IntellxxDNA reports are divided into categories of health conditions showing both risks and benefits of your personal genetic code. As a Clinical Decision Support Tool, a psychiatrist can use an IntellxxDNA Genomic Report to analyze the clinically relevant information about your personal genetic make-up. This includes information about potential interventions that can be used to optimize your mental wellness and brain health.

The connection between our mental health and our biology is irrefutable—and uncovering and focusing on certain “risky” genes can be an essential component of psychiatric treatment. To illustrate this mind-body connection, today I want to explore how certain genetic variations relate to systemic and brain inflammation and poor mental health outcomes, and then discuss how we can use this knowledge to help your immune system help you! In my discussion below on inflammation, I am going to share some of what I have learned as I have studied genomics with IntellxxDNA and combined it with my psychiatric knowledge.

“Brain Fire Genes” Tested by IntellxxDNA

The IL6 Genetic Variant
There are a number of Immune System and Inflammation Genes tested by IntellxxDNA that can tell you quite a bit about your health, and today we will focus on four of them.

A variant of IL6 is known to increase the immune system’s inflammatory response and create cytokines (proteins that cause inflammation) that cross the blood brain barrier into the brain, and activate the glial cells to cause brain inflammation. This IL6 variant also creates a higher risk of mood disorders including depression. Increased release of IL6 in major depressive disorders is associated with a poorer response to treatment and is associated with a wide range of depressive symptoms. Increased IL6 activity may also cause depression through activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) (“fight, flight or freeze”) axis, or influence neurotransmitter manufacture and breadown; and it also causes the release of other cytokines that cause inflammation, known as TNF Alpha and IL1. Supplements such as sulforaphane, quercetin, and omega 3s can “turn off” this IL6 variant to reduce brain inflammation.

The TNF Alpha Genetic Variant
Numerous studies have shown that patients with mood disorders have increased levels of the TNF Alpha protein coded by this gene. This cytokine also crosses the blood brain barrier, where it activates the microglia that further inflame the brain. A number of other psychiatric conditions are associated with this gene and brain inflammation.

In Autism Spectrum Disorders, levels of TNF Alpha cytokines are 50 times higher than normal in the cerebral spinal fluid of these patients, and there are elevations in IL6 as well. And the higher the levels of TNF Alpha, the more severe the symptoms of autism.

In a study of children with PANDAS/PANS, which affects 1 in 200 children, 100% of them were found to have the genetic variant of TNF Alpha associated with increased brain inflammation. The same TNF Alpha variant confers six times the risk of celiac disease, a condition that is associated with gut inflammation and serious neurological problems, which may be why a gluten-free diet often helps alleviate some of the symptoms of autism.

Luteolin, Quercetin, and Rutin have shown promising results in “treating” this TNF Alpha gene variant in children and adults suffering from autism. Combining all three together decreased TNF Alpha in the bloodstream by 60%, and when given to children with autism, they demonstrated improvements in communication, living skills, and sociability.

This TNF Alpha variant also confers 2.8 times the risk of developing OCD, by activating what is known as the glutamate system in the brain. Glutamate also worsens symptoms of anxiety and mood disorders. Excess glutamate also reduces the brain’s ability to grow new brain cells and create new synaptic connections between them, which can reduce one’s ability to learn new information.

TNF Alpha also makes less serotonin available in the synapse by increasing its reuptake, further contributing to anxiety and depression.

TNF Alpha levels are also much higher in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, one of the hallmarks of which is an impaired ability to grow new brain cells and make new connections between them. Sulforaphane has been shown to help clear the amyloid protein tangles in the brain cells of these patients—proteins that accumulate to cause cell damage—and reduce brain inflammation. And Lion’s Mane has been shown to reduce mild cognitive impairment by reducing TNF Alpha levels. When the supplement was stopped the improvement went away.

These gene variants can negatively affect health in other ways, such as Crohn’s disease, autoimmune diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

This TNF Alpha gene can be “turned off” with supplements such as Lion’s Mane, capsaicin, sulforaphane, and milk thistle, to help bring about symptom relief and better outcomes.

IL6 and TNF Alpha genetic variations can also be involved in promoting “brain fog” which is a common complaint in patients suffering from a chronic mood or anxiety condition, and poor regulation of these genes can also be a precursor to developing dementia.

Now let’s focus on two other genetic variants uncovered by IntellxxDNA testing—IL1A and IL1B—that also promote brain inflammation.

IL1 Alpha and IL1 Beta Genetic Variations
These genes are associated with higher rates of dementia, schizophrenia, and autoimmune diseases, and have been shown to activate those microglial cells we mentioned before. With these two genetic variations, some of the same supplements noted above can also help to switch off their effects, along with Resveratrol, omega 3s, and curcumin.

These four genes not only cause brain inflammation by negatively affecting your immune system, this inflammation in turn accelerates the development of many of the most common mental health problems plaguing us in today’s world.

Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, Depression and Alzheimer’s from “Brain Fire Genes”

Bipolar Disorder: Evidence for involvement of the immune system, and in a broader sense, inflammation in mood disorders, including Depression and Bipolar Disorder, has been steadily accumulating in recent years. In addition, a complex mixture of behavioral changes observed in inflammatory states, which includes mood changes such as anxiety, depression, failure to concentrate, lethargy, and “feeling sick” (my patients describe feeling like they have a low-grade flu) that are associated with proinflammatory cytokines such as TNF Alpha, IL6, and IL1 Beta. These cytokines can actually induce mood disorders in physically ill patients without a previous mental illness; and a great percentage of patients with mood disorders also have autoimmune pathologies, such as hypothyroidism, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes mellitus, hepatitis, and Crohn’s disease. Patients who suffer from autoimmune diseases also have an increased risk of developing bipolar disorder.

Two studies used PET Scanning to demonstrate a brain inflammation condition in patients with bipolar disorder, including increased activation of immune system cells (glial cells), and damage to brain cells (often reversible with the right supplements, diet, and lifestyle changes) in the hippocampus of bipolar patients compared to healthy controls. The hippocampus is intimately involved in learning new information, and regulating and processing emotions. No wonder these patients complain of brain fog!

PTSD: Elevations in the bloodstream of TNF Alpha, IL6, and IL1 Beta cytokines are also associated with PTSD. And neuroimaging studies in PTSD patients demonstrated that these elevated inflammatory biomarkers are associated with altered structure and functioning in brain regions that are responsible for the regulation of stress and the processing of emotions, including the amygdala, hippocampus, and frontal cortex.

Alzheimer’s Disease: Remember that “methylation gene” – MTHFR? When this genetic variant is combined with one of these inflammation genes, they triple the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease and vascular dementia (caused by a narrowing of the tiny blood vessels in the brain that nourish our neurons with nutrients and oxygen).

Use Genetic Testing to Determine the Root Causes of Brain Inflammation

Knowledge of your personal genome gives you the power to restore your health and improve your relationships by affecting how your genes express themselves. As you have learned in our Root Cause Psychiatry blog series so far, simply identifying symptoms and prescribing medications is not enough.

Without the type of genetic testing provided by IntellxxDNA, a psychiatrist is simply not as effective in treating individuals with chronic unremitting emotional pain—who often present to us feeling horribly broken and hopeless after other treatment efforts failed to improve their symptoms. As you have learned today, chronic inflammation may be one of the most important root causes of all!

To Learn More

If you would like to learn more about Potomac Psychiatry’s Root Cause Psychiatry Program, feel free to contact them.

Mental Health Genetic Testing: What You Need to Know

Mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia are complex and often misunderstood disorders that can have a significant impact on an individual’s quality of life. While there is no singular cause for mental health conditions, research has shown that genetics play a role in their development. As a result, mental health genetic testing has become an increasingly popular way for individuals to gain a better understanding of their own mental health and potentially identify their risk for certain conditions.

But what exactly is mental health genetic testing, and how does it work? In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of this increasingly popular form of testing and discuss what you need to know before considering it for yourself or a loved one.

What is Mental Health Genetic Testing?

Mental health genetic testing is a form of genetic testing that looks for specific genetic variations that have been linked to mental health conditions. These variations, known as genetic markers, can be used to assess an individual’s risk for developing certain mental health conditions and guide their treatment.

There are several different types of mental health genetic testing available, including:

• Single gene testing: This type of testing looks for specific genetic variations in a single gene that have been linked to a mental health condition. For example, a test may look for a genetic variation in the serotonin transporter gene, which has been linked to an increased risk of developing depression.
• Multigene panel testing: This type of testing looks for genetic variations in multiple genes that have been linked to a specific mental health condition. For example, a panel test may look for genetic variations in several genes that have been linked to an increased risk of developing schizophrenia.
• Whole exome or genome sequencing: This type of testing looks at the entire exome (the protein-coding part of the genome) or genome (the complete set of genetic instructions in an organism) to identify any genetic variations that may be associated with mental health conditions.

Mental health genetic testing is typically done using a sample of an individual’s DNA, which can be obtained through a blood or saliva sample. The sample is then sent to a laboratory where it is analyzed for specific genetic variations.

What Are the Benefits of Mental Health Genetic Testing?

There are several potential benefits to mental health genetic testing, including:

• Personalized treatment: Mental health genetic testing can help identify specific genetic variations that may be contributing to an individual’s mental health condition, which can guide their treatment. For example, if an individual has a genetic variation that is known to respond well to a certain medication, their healthcare provider may be more likely to prescribe that medication.
• Improved understanding: Mental health genetic testing can help individuals and their families better understand the underlying causes of their mental health condition and how it may be passed down through their family. This can provide a sense of clarity and help individuals and their families feel more in control of their mental health.
• Early detection: By identifying genetic variations that may increase an individual’s risk for a mental health condition, mental health genetic testing can help with early detection and intervention. This can potentially prevent the condition from worsening and improve the individual’s overall quality of life.
• While testing, it’s important to keep the relationship between physical and mental health in mind. One of the best ways to understand where one’s physical health stands is through a body composition test. Just like seeing a Dermatologist or a heart doctor, we need to keep our mental health checked too.

Mental Health Genetic Testing from IntellxxDNA

No matter your age, race or gender, understanding your genomic profile provides a guide for you and your clinician in the care of your body and mind. Your clinician can use an IntellxxDNA test to provide comprehensive, clinical-focused knowledge of health risks and benefits within your personal genetic make-up. Our reports are a foundation for planning your personalized approach toward optimal health, wellness and an improved quality of life.

IntellxxDNA reports don’t make decisions for you. Instead, they provide unprecedented insight into your unique genetic make-up to assist your clinician in developing true, personalized care. How?

Your DNA contains variants, or SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), that may signal potential benefits and risks that lie within your DNA. Our reports examine the complex interplay between these variants and how they can affect your quality of life. We include evidence-based, well-researched potential intervention strategies – encompassing environment, lifestyle, nutrition, supplements and medications – that will serve as a basis of discussion between you and your clinician.