These limitations mean that PRS are not yet clinically useful in psychiatry. Nonetheless, genetics is beginning to aid our understanding of the pleiotropic relationships among psychiatric disorders, cognitive, and behavioral phenotypes. Because there are few, if any well-validated biomarkers in psychiatry (in contrast with most other areas of medicine), significant challenges remain. While the predictive utility of PRS is growing and useful in a research context, it is still low enough for most disorders that it is still premature to use PRS to influence how patients are currently treated. To understand how to incorporate PRS into clinical practice for patients with heritable psychiatric disorders, studies will need to assess health outcomes for various behavioral interventions, treatment regimens, and/or differential diagnoses.
