In our society today we can draw blood and determine what levels of certain things (vitamins or what not) people are low on, and then prescribe them things to make their levels “better”.
When it comes to mental health/mental illness, why can’t we do something similar with our brain chemicals? Like somehow draw some brain fluid or something and see that this person is low on dopamine or serotonin and then prescribe accordingly? Wouldn’t that help the mental health community immensely?
In: Biology
It’s difficult to measure neurotransmitters directly, since they are quickly metabolized. But we can measure their metabolites. For example, metanephrine is a metabolite of adrenaline, and homovanillic acid is a metabolite of dopamine. These can be measured in blood, urine and CSF (fluid drawn from the spinal cord). It is used to diagnose certain tumors.
These tests are not used in psychiatry, but I suppose they could be. You might need to know a patient’s baseline levels first though. I did a quick search and found [this study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11287053/) showing higher homovanillic acid in schizophrenic patients, and [this study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7982867/) showing higher metanephrines in ADHD patients.
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