Digital Mental Health Trends: Policy, Telehealth, and Generative AI
As technology-based care continues to evolve, mental health care providers are increasingly navigating shifting policies, new digital tools, and emerging risks. In this video filmed at Psych Congress 2025, Steering Committee Member Steven Chan, MD, MBA, FAPA, FAMIA, offers an overview of the most pressing topics in digital mental health. Dr Chan first touches on the importance of keeping up with evolving policies that regulate the use of telehealth in psychiatric practice. He also discusses the expanding landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, highlighting the need for clinicians to familiarize themselves with the capabilities of these emerging technologies.
For more telehealth resources, visit the Telehealth Excellence Forum.
For more conference coverage, visit the Psych Congress newsroom.
Key Takeaways for Clinical Practice:
- Digital mental health policy & telehealth prescribing: Clinicians must closely follow evolving, multi-layered policies that affect telehealth prescribing, as changing rules may determine whether controlled substances can be legally prescribed.
- AI terminology & models: AI ranges from long-standing, rules-driven systems to newer generative AI that creates text, audio, and video, making familiarity with AI language increasingly important.
- Patient safety & misinformation risks: Recent warnings show generative AI being used to impersonate physicians or health influencers to sell products or provide false endorsements, requiring clinician awareness and caution.
Read the Transcript:
Steven Chan, MD, MBA, FAPA, FAMIA: Hi everyone, my name is Steven Chan. I'm a clinical associate professor affiliated with Stanford University School of Medicine and a steering committee member for Psych Congress.
Psych Congress Network: Looking ahead, what emerging trends in digital mental health should clinicians start preparing for now?
Chan: Digital health encompasses so many different topics, and I think the most important topic—well, there's a few actually, but probably the number one thing is policy. Understanding what kind of rules are being enacted, what kind of protections are being put in place can be very important.
As an example: telehealth prescribing. That is affected by multiple layers of policies, and they can influence whether someone's able to prescribe controlled substances or not. One of the things that we're seeing is that these rules keep on evolving and [clinicians] have to be on top of them in order to legally prescribe these substances.
The second thing that people need to be aware of is lingo and the language around the different types of AI being used. AI has been around for decades. If you think about Pac -Man or any sort of other old video game from the 80s, even beforehand too, or voice menus in phones—that’s AI. That's a type of AI that's very rules-driven, but we're seeing more and more frontier AI models that use generative technologies to create text, create audio, create video. We can harness that for good, but it can also be used for bad.
One thing that came out very recently are some warnings where generative AI was used to impersonate famous physicians or famous health influencers to sell products and provide false endorsements. We just need to be very mindful of that when it comes to AI use.
I'm Steven Chan. Thank you for joining and I hope that was helpful for you and your professional growth and your clinical practice.
Steven Chan, MD, MBA, FAPA, FAMIA, (@StevenChanMD, www.stevenchanMD.com) is a triple board-certified clinical informaticist, psychiatrist, and addiction medicine physician. At Stanford University School of Medicine, he serves as Clinical Associate Professor and Immediate Past Chair of the Committee on Innovation at the American Psychiatric Association. His work has been published in JAMA, Telemedicine and e-Health, JMIR, Wired, and he has made appearances on PBS and NPR Ideastream. Steven is also a sought-after national speaker, sharing his insights at Fortune 50 companies like Google headquarters.
In addition to his academic and clinical roles, Steven is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of AsyncHealth, a University of California-backed digital mental health startup supported by Berkeley SkyDeck PAD-13 and the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (NSF i-Corps). He writes and podcasts at Mental Power Hacks (@mpowerhacks), a consumer guide to mental performance, productivity, and success.
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Any views and opinions expressed above are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of the Psych Congress Network or HMP Global, their employees, and affiliates.
