Join the next Society of Digital Psychiatry and JMIR Mental Health webinar
Digital Tools and Human Connection: Responsibly Expanding Mental Health Access - June 24, 2026 at 12:00 PM ET
Featured Speaker
Jeff Fladen, MSW
Jeff Fladen, MSW, is the President of the NAMI Board of Directors and a clinical social worker with extensive frontline and leadership experience. Over a decorated career, he has served as a therapist, crisis counselor, and psychiatric program manager, as well as the Executive Director of NAMI Tennessee from 2013 to 2023. Jeff brings deep lived experience to his advocacy as both a family caregiver and a mental health service recipient. A frequent national presenter on mental health and crisis response, he holds a Master of Social Work from The Ohio State University.
Why should I attend?
As AI and digital tools scale, they offer unprecedented opportunities to expand mental health resources—but how do we safeguard the empathy at the core of care? In this engaging session, John Torous and NAMI board president Jeff Fladen will bring frontline clinical experience and national mental health leadership to a conversation on how AI can responsibly expand access to care while preserving human connection.
Key Takeaways
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Safeguarding Empathy at Scale: Discover how to navigate the critical balance between rapidly scaling AI and digital tools while firmly preserving the human connection and empathy that lie at the core of effective mental health care.
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Bridging Clinical Innovation and Lived Experience: Learn how the intersection of cutting-edge clinical informatics, national advocacy, and real-world lived experience provides a holistic roadmap for responsibly expanding access to psychiatric resources.
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Grounding Digital Expansion in Frontline Practice: Understand why the future of digital psychiatry must be shaped by practical, frontline clinical experience and crisis response rather than purely theoretical technology frameworks.
John Torous, MD, MBI
Dr Torous is the director of the Digital Psychiatry division in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an affiliated teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, where he also serves as a staff psychiatrist and member of the academic faculty. He has a background in electrical engineering and computer sciences; he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, before pursuing medical school at the University of California, San Diego. Dr Torous completed his psychiatry residency, fellowship in clinical informatics, and master’s degree in biomedical informatics at Harvard. He actively investigates the potential of mobile mental health technologies for psychiatry and has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and 5 book chapters on the subject. Dr Torous serves as the editor-in-chief of JMIR Mental Health.