An Overview of the Southern California Psychiatry Conference From This Year's Chair

CONFERENCE REPORTER

Gus Alva, MD, DFAPA, serves as the Chair of the Southern California Psychiatry Conference. Ahead of today's schedule, he shared a comprehensive overview of what attendees can expect to learn and explore in the sessions.

Bookending the meeting will be sessions on muscarinic agonism's role in schizophrenia to begin and sessions on Alzheimer disease to conclude.

"The reason that this is so important is that, as we commence with our sessions, we need to recall that schizophrenia is a chronic, disabling brain disorder that affects maybe 1% of the population. It's got multiple symptoms where individuals can't trust what they hear, think, or feel. As a consequence of that, we definitely know there's an overlap with Alzheimer disease," shared Alva. "As we walk from the first session, dealing with schizophrenia and speaking about the novelty of an M1-M4 agonist and how that actually helps with depleting some of that presynaptic, hyperdopaminergic state that we were not able to address previously. We then can potentially find a nice stepping stone in averting the likelihood of unintended consequences, which is the last session of the first day of our meeting: tardive dyskinesia."

He shares details about what you can expect throughout the agenda, on everything from incretins to bipolar disorder, and prescription digital therapeutics to postpartum depression.

"I'm so happy to be a part of this. This regional meeting is an excellent example of what the concept of camaraderie, engaging with local experts, mentoring, and networking entails," said Alva.

If you missed this weekend's meeting, you can still register for the inaugural 2025 Southern Florida Psychiatry Conference, which will take place on November 21-22, 2025 in West Palm Beach, FL.

Dr Alva is a board-certified psychiatrist, the medical director of ATP Clinical Research, and Mood Disorders Section Editor for Psychiatric Times.