Interventional psychiatry is the part of the field that treats the brain circuit directly rather than only through systemic medication. It exists because a substantial number of people with depression, OCD, and related conditions do not get well on medication and psychotherapy, and running further medication trials past a certain point has diminishing returns.
These modalities differ in how established they are, and a physician's relationship to any one of them — delivering it, referring for it, or studying it — differs too. [READ BEFORE PUBLISHING — nothing below says you deliver any of this, and it must not until you write it here. For each modality (TMS, fMRI/connectivity-guided targeting, LIFU, kTMP) state exactly one of: (a) "I provide this clinically at [site/practice name]"; (b) "I do not provide it myself — I evaluate candidacy, refer to [named centers], and co-manage"; (c) "Research only, available to me solely through an IRB-approved trial."]
Beyond that, anyone considering one of them needs the practical detail before they can act on it. [Add, per modality: which diagnoses and patient populations you accept, whether a referral is required, any device or site credentialing that applies, and — for anything you deliver clinically — where sessions happen and who supervises them. State separately whether you provide or coordinate ketamine/esketamine or ECT, since patients assume an interventional practice does.]
The modalities most often discussed:
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) — magnetic pulses delivered through the scalp induce electrical activity in a targeted region of cortex. It is noninvasive and given awake, without anesthesia. The core FDA clearance is for the treatment of major depressive disorder in adults who have failed to achieve satisfactory improvement from prior antidepressant medication in the current episode; individual devices carry additional cleared indications, including obsessive-compulsive disorder. "FDA-cleared for treatment-resistant depression" is a common shorthand, but it is not the clearance language, and the distinction matters when you are deciding whether it applies to you. [If you provide or refer for TMS, name the specific cleared indication(s) and device(s) you work with, the typical course length, and what a course involves at the site that delivers it. If you do neither, say so plainly — patients arrive assuming an interventional psychiatrist runs a TMS service.]
- fMRI-guided (connectivity-guided) targeting — conventional TMS is aimed using scalp measurements or a group-average location. Functional MRI of an individual brain can instead be used to find where that person's own network connectivity suggests the coil should sit. The premise is simple: brains differ, and the target should follow the person rather than the average. Individualized connectivity-based targeting is a defined element of one FDA-cleared accelerated protocol (SAINT/SNT, cleared for major depressive disorder); it is not a cleared feature of TMS generally, and outside that specific protocol it remains an active research question rather than a settled standard of care.
- Low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) — acoustic energy focused through the intact skull onto a small volume of tissue, without an incision. Its distinguishing feature is reach: it can address deep structures that TMS cannot. For psychiatric indications LIFU is investigational. It is not FDA-cleared or approved as a psychiatric treatment, and the only way a patient can receive it is by enrolling in an approved research study.
- Kilohertz transcranial magnetic perturbation (kTMP) — a newer class of noninvasive electromagnetic brain stimulation. It is investigational: not FDA-cleared or approved for any indication, not available as clinical care from anyone, and studied only under research protocols.
I want to be direct about the limits of this. Neuromodulation is not a last-resort miracle, response rates are meaningful but far from universal, and the honest version of the conversation includes who it is unlikely to help. Describing these methods here is background, not an offer to provide them — see the note below on where clinical care ends and research begins. My own research involving these methods is described on the Research page.