Social Determinants of Psychopathology: Bridging Etiologic Research and Translation To
Improve The Lives Of Patients And Populations

The social causes of psychopathology have been recognized nearly as long as psychopathology
itself. Advances in research on the social determinants of psychopathology have enabled us to
understand the causal role of social factors on mental health. For nearly all aspects of the
mechanistic underpinnings of psychopathology, we are enjoying a greater understanding of how
social factors influence mental health. Social factors become embodied through genomic
processes, become encoded in the developing brain, and have enduring influences on
neurocognitive development in childhood and cognitive decline later in life. Social factors
moderate treatment response and treatment outcomes for many psychiatric conditions. And social
factors fundamentally shape the ability to seek and receive mental health care. Unfortunately, the
tremendous gains in understanding how social factors cause and sustain psychiatric illness have
not yet led to comparable gains in preventing psychiatric illness and in reducing disparities in
psychiatric illness; nor have they led to comparable gains in the effectiveness of psychiatric care. I
propose to organize an APPA conference that would bring together leading scholars on the social
determinants of psychopathology across mental health’s disciplines – epidemiology,
anthropology, sociology, genomics, neuroscience, biostatistics, psychiatry, and health policy – to
present on our current understanding of how social factors cause mental illness, and what stands
in the way of this understanding being fully utilized to improve the lives of patients and
populations.

Keynote presentations on the social determinants of mental health, community and clinical
interventions, social policy, racial and ethnic disparities, and global mental health

–  Margarita Alegría, PhD, Chief of the Disparities Research Unit, Massachusetts General
Hospital, Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry, Harvard Medical
School
–  Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, PhD, Samuel F. and Rose B. Gingold Professor of Human
Development and Social Policy and Director, Institute for Child Youth and Family Policy,
Brandeis University
–  David Williams, PhD, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of
Public Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
–  Vikram Patel, MB, BS, PhD, Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of Global Health and
Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Featured panels
–  Bridging APPA 2024 and 2025, and bridging etiologic and intervention research: how can
we identify intervention targets from observational data? Chaired by APPA Past-President
Roberto Lewis-Fernández, MD
–  Addressing the social determinants of mental health through social and economic policies
–  Socio-structural determinants of mental health
–  Qualitative approaches to addressing the social determinants of mental health
–  Community and clinical interventions
–  Social determinants and global mental health (jointly hosted by the APPA and the World
Psychiatric Association Section on Epidemiology and Public Health)
Congratulations to the 2025 APPA Award recipients!
 – Theresa Betancourt, ScD, Hoch Award
–  Stephen Gilman, ScD, Hamilton Award
–  Jaimie Gradus, PhD, Breslau/Murphy Award
–  John Pamplin, PhD, Robins/Guze Award
–  David Williams, PhD, Zubin Award
Opportunities for early career investigators and clinicians
– Mentorship program (please sign up by XX)
– Early career roundtable
– Trainee workshop
Stephen E. Gilman, ScD,
APPA President Senior Investigator and Chief, Social and Behavioral Sciences Branch Division of Intramural Research Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development