Reimagining psychiatric care with agentic AI: promise, challenges, and a roadmap forward
Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) represents a pivotal shift in clinical decision support, moving beyond static tools by reasoning, adapting, and acting alongside clinicians. Psychiatry, grounded in subjective experience, trust, and longitudinal care, offers both an opportunity and a high-stakes testbed. Agentic systems may enhance documentation, personalize care, support continuous monitoring, and extend access, while raising risks around bias, explainability, privacy, and therapeutic alliance. In this Perspective, we (i) define psychiatry-specific agentic AI distinct from decision-support and fully autonomous systems; (ii) synthesize current evidence across studies; (iii) propose assistive, collaborative, and semi-autonomous roles; and (iv) outline a roadmap for responsible implementation.
Authors
- Vijay Mago (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9741-3463)
- Reza Samavi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6768-0168)
- Shakila Meshkat (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7010-1785)
- Mohammad Amin Kamaleddin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1856-503X)
- Bazen Gashaw Teferra (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5325-9639)
- Yuqi Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6527-2221)
- Venkat Bhat
- Sri Krishnan
- Y Zhang
- Andrew Greenshaw
- Bo Cao
- Divya Sharma
- Argyrios Perivolaris
- Rakesh Jetly
Institutions
- St. Michael's Hospital (CA)
- Ministry of Health (CA)
- University of Ottawa (CA)
- University of Alberta (CA)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- York University (CA)
- Government of Alberta (CA)
- St Michael’s Hospital (IE)
- Unity Health Toronto
- Toronto Metropolitan University (CA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- npj Digital Medicine
- Published
- 2026-02-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-026-02453-4
- Primary Topic
- Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00