Talk: 

Using data to personalise treatment for depression

Ellen Driessen is Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology at Radboud University in the Netherlands, who has won numerous awards for her work, including from the Dutch Government.

Profile: https://www.ru.nl/en/people/driessen-e

Ellen is a clinical psychologist whose research is focused on improving treatment for people with depression, and understanding ‘what works for whom’. Ellen’s goal is to improve care, beyond questions about the efficacy of treatments and instead through methods to optimise treatment by identifying the best intervention for an individual based on their personal characteristics. She leads a large international project on personalised medicine approaches to the treatment of depression, developing a tool for selecting the right treatments for people.

In this talk, Ellen will present some of her research into identifying factors that might impact an individuals’ response to treatments for depression and how we can personalise treatment selection. This includes the use of clinical and controlled trial data, alongside statistical approaches to identify differential response to treatments, as well as how such developments might be brought to clinical practice.

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About the Mental Health Theme Webinar Series 

Using data science to identify and reduce inequalities in mental health care. 

There are known inequalities in access to mental health treatment across different groups of people. There are also observed differences in the likelihood of benefitting from treatment for those who are able to access support. As the number of people who are suffering from mental health disorders is increasing globally, there are concerns this will further exacerbate these inequalities.  Advances in data science have the potential to identify those most at risk, and how we might provide better care for these groups. 

This webinar series brings together researchers and clinicians working in mental health to hear about ways in which data science might be used to support how treatments are provided.