Brain Health, Novel Treatments, and Diagnostic Innovation at APA

Helen Lavretsky, MD, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, director of the Late-Life Mood, Stress and Wellness Program and the Integrative Psychiatry Program, and past president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, outlined her perspectives on the major challenges and emerging directions in psychiatry.

Lavretsky identified the central challenge facing the field as the widening gap between rising rates of mental illness driven by an increasingly stressful and unpredictable world, and the limited capacity of current psychiatry to offset those societal stressors at scale.¹ She contrasted this challenge with grounds for optimism, noting that novel treatments, like psychedelics and neurostimulation, represent a more effective generation of therapeutic options capable of delivering more personalized care.²

Lavretsky described her contributions to an American Psychiatric Association textbook on lifestyle psychiatry, which she characterized as a growing subspecialty focused on integrating diet, exercise, and sleep into preventive efforts for neuropsychiatric illness across the lifespan. She argued that building brain health and offering practical behavioral solutions to patients and caregivers represents a meaningful complement to pharmacological treatment.

On diagnostic nosology, Lavretsky described a UCLA brain health summit discussion centering on the future of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, noting that the APA research council is actively exploring how biomarkers of neuropsychiatric illness—developed extensively within psychiatry but not yet incorporated into formal diagnostic criteria—might be integrated into future editions. She stated that "future versions of DSM will be more focused and integrate more personalized precision psychiatry kind of approach into the diagnostic and statistical manual," framing the convergence of the brain health movement and diagnostic innovation as a defining direction for the field.

Dr Lavretsky is a professor in residence in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is past president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, and a fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. She is also on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Over a billion people living with mental health conditions - services require urgent scale-up. World Health Organization. September 2, 2025. Accessed May 13, 2026. https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-people-living-with-mental-health-conditions-services-require-urgent-scale-up

2. Kishon R, Cycowicz YM. Psychedelic therapy: bridging neuroplasticity, phenomenology, and clinical outcomes. Front Psychiatry. 2025;16:1637162.