In an upbeat speech to open APA’s 51st Institute on Psychiatric Services in New Orleans last month, APA President Allan Tasman, M.D., hailed new scientific breakthroughs that will revolutionize the field and outlined a variety of fiscal initiatives to aid members.

The fiscal initiatives will be focused on district branches, early career psychiatrists, and public education. The initiatives were agreed upon at the APA Board of Trustees meeting immediately prior to the institute and will take effect over the next two years, contingent upon the Association’s successful reorganization from a 501(c)(3) to a 501(c)(6) organization. The change, if approved by APA members and the IRS, would permit greater expenditures for public advocacy and loosen some of the current constraints on how APA can spend money.

"I have no doubt this is the most exciting time in history to be in psychiatry," Tasman told those at the opening session. The field’s knowledge base, augmented by research advances in areas ranging from molecular genetics to functional neuroanatomy, are "transforming our understanding of brain function and the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of psychiatric illness."

Research on neural plasticity suggests that the human brain is capable of development and modification throughout the lifespan, he noted, altering the notion that brain development is fundamentally fixed in early life. These findings reinforce the validity of an inclusive biopsychosocial approach that factors in the capacity for positive adaptations inherent in the brain.

How new developments are communicated will be crucial to both patients and psychiatrists. The galloping revolution in information technology now allows increasingly personal communication over vast distances. Society has "clearly come to a time in history that it is taken for granted that human physical presence is not necessary for communication," Tasman observed. The growing use of telepsychiatry and the challenges of appropriate use of the Internet reflect this transformation.

Advances in virtual reality technology may soon reach the point where it will be "moot to ask if experiences in the virtual environment are real or valid," he added. And as computers become increasingly capable of artificial intelligence that mimic human processes, "our ability to not only understand but to modify mental processes will take a quantum leap."

Direct human brain-machine interfaces, already employed in cochlear implants, offer the promise of more focused, safer therapies that alter brain function.

"While now only the realm of science fiction, devices to modify memory or change patterns of emotional responsiveness may be developed within the careers of young psychiatrists already in practice," he noted. Although full of promise, such technologies also imply peril, and the "control of such technology will likely become one of the most critical societal decisions of the information age," Tasman asserted.

As technology increasingly modifies the world, psychiatry will increasingly face issues that go to the heart of what it means to be human. In the imagined universe of science-fiction writer Philip Dick, machines designed as "simulacra of humans often show themselves to be more human than their flesh and blood counterparts," Tasman noted. Psychiatry, and society at large, "must work tirelessly to preserve the ‘human’ —[a task that] will become of more and more central importance as our world undergoes the chaotic and often painful transmutation into the next iteration of the information age."