Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Mental health illnesses like depression and obsessive compulsive disorder affects 1 in 4 worldwide. Nearly 20% of those affected do not improve, despite counselling and medications. In these treatment resistant patients, deep brain stimulation and other neurosurgical techniques allow for nearly 50% of patients to dramatically improve. Special types of neuroimaging, such a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), can be used to detect abnormalities in brain activity. Using fMRI and other imaging techniques, patterns can be determined which predict which patients are most likely to improve with treatment, and also which types of treatment a patient would most likely benefit from receiving. The data from patients who have already undergone these procedures will be used to create a formula which can be used to inform future patients about their likelihood of improving after each of the available treatments. This would not only dramatically improve the treatment of patients with severe mental health illness, but also ease the burden on the health care system by allowing patients who are unlikely to respond to be selected for other kinds of novel treatments.