Clinicians should use care with mental health applications, expert cautions
UCI Health psychiatrist says patient-clinician connection should be maintained
IN THE NEWS: Mental health applications are increasingly popular for patients. But a growing number of psychiatric and mental health clinicians are using apps in their practice.
Dr. John Luo, a psychiatrist and director of Emergency & Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at UCI Health Psychiatry Services, spoke with the Psychiatric Times while attending the 2025 American Psychiatric Association (APA) Annual Meeting about the risks of becoming overly reliant on such apps.
“In our field, we don’t want to lose touch with the whole purpose of the connection and the physician-patient dyad. To me, that’s why I’m in medicine.”
"If you lose that sense of connectedness and humanity, then really we are just playing video games."
Luo is also a professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. He is an internationally recognized educator and expert on behavioral health informatics. He has presented at numerous conferences, written books and articles on technology use in mental health and has been recognized locally and nationally for excellence in teaching.
About UCI Health
UCI Health is one of California’s largest academic health systems and the clinical enterprise of the University of California, Irvine. Established on July 1, 1976, UCI Health has grown into a 1,461-bed health system that includes UCI Health — Orange, UCI Health — Irvine, four Community Network hospitals and a growing network of ambulatory care centers across Orange and Los Angeles counties. As Orange County’s only academic health systems, UCI Health is home to the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center based in the county, the region’s only American College of Surgeons-verified Level I adult and Level II pediatric trauma center, American College of Emergency Physicians Gold Level 1 Geriatric Emergency Department and a nationally recognized regional burn center verified by the American Burn Association. Powered by UC Irvine, UCI Health serves 5.6 million people across Orange County, western Riverside County and southeast Los Angeles County through excellence in patient care, research and medical education. Follow UCI Health on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.