Formal definition
A stable, versioned statement intended for citation.
Integrative psychiatry
Integrative psychiatry is the practice of psychiatry in which the full range of available assessment and treatment methods is applied to a case, and in which the patient’s functioning and quality of life serve as the primary outcomes.
v1.0 · 2026-08-30 · The Integrative Psychiatry Evidence Project
Four clauses, and what each one does
The sentence above is short by design. Each clause carries a specific consequence for practice, and the four together determine what belongs inside the field and what falls outside it.
1. The method set is unrestricted, and it includes assessment
Integrative psychiatry places no prior limit on which assessment or treatment methods a clinician may consider. Medication, psychotherapy, sleep intervention, exercise prescription, dietary change, and mind-body practice are all admissible. So is the diagnostic side of the work: collateral history, functional assessment, sleep and activity data, and standard laboratory evaluation.
Two exclusions that other definitions make, this one does not. Nothing is admitted for being natural, traditional, or non-pharmacological. Nothing is excluded for being conventional. A definition that admits methods on the basis of their category rather than their performance is how the term became interchangeable with complementary and alternative medicine in the first place.
2. The primary outcome is functioning and quality of life
This is the clause that does the most work. Symptom-rating scales remain useful instruments, and they are the endpoints most trials are powered on. Under this definition they are treated as proxies. What the treatment is aiming at is whether the patient works, sleeps, sustains relationships, and reports a life they judge to be worth living.
Adopting a functional endpoint changes clinical decisions in an observable way. A regimen that lowers a depression score while leaving the patient sedated and unable to work has not succeeded on this definition. A regimen that leaves a residual score intact while the patient returns to full function has.
3. A method earns inclusion by evidence that it moves those outcomes
Because the endpoint is specified, inclusion becomes a measurement question rather than a philosophical one. A method belongs in integrative psychiatric practice when there is evidence that it improves functioning or quality of life at an acceptable risk and burden. A method that has been tested and has not shown that effect does not belong, and neither does a method that has never been tested against those outcomes at all.
This clause is the reason this project publishes an explicit scope and grading framework rather than a list of modalities. The list changes as evidence accumulates. The standard does not.
4. Guideline-supported treatment is advised first
Breadth of method carries an obvious hazard, which is that a patient with a treatable illness is offered an adjunct while the indicated treatment is deferred. The sequencing rule that addresses this is well established in the integrative mental health literature: additional methods may be introduced after guideline treatments have been applied, or at minimum advised and documented.1
Presentations where this rule is not negotiable include mania, psychosis, catatonia, severe depression with suicidal ideation, eating disorders at medical risk, and withdrawal states. These are handled under standard psychiatric care.
What this definition deliberately omits
| Omitted | Reason |
|---|---|
| A list of included modalities | Modality lists date quickly and invite category-based reasoning. The grading framework replaces the list. |
| The phrase “whole person” | It appears in most existing definitions and constrains nothing. Two clinicians who disagree about every clinical decision can both endorse it. |
| “Mind, body, and spirit” | Same objection. Where spiritual or existential concerns bear on functioning, they are assessed and addressed under clause 1 without needing separate billing in the definition. |
| Any claim about root causes | Root-cause language is the organizing idea of functional medicine and carries assumptions about causal identifiability that psychiatric illness does not currently support. See the comparison page. |
| Any reference to conventional medicine as limited or reductive | The definition adds an endpoint and a method set. It makes no claim that standard psychiatric care is deficient. |
Relationship to adjacent formal definitions
Two definitions in the surrounding literature are load-bearing, and neither covers psychiatry.
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health defines integrative health as bringing conventional and complementary approaches together in a coordinated way, and it distinguishes complementary use (alongside conventional care) from alternative use (in place of it).2 That page does not address psychiatric practice.
The Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health defines integrative medicine around the practitioner–patient relationship, the whole person, evidence, and the use of all appropriate therapeutic approaches.3 It is generic to medicine and specifies no endpoint.
Within psychiatry, the closest existing formulation describes integrative practice as the coordinated use of complementary and conventional approaches for the management of specific symptoms.4 The definition on this page departs from that formulation in one respect, which is the substitution of function and quality of life for symptom management as the stated target.
Citing this definition
The Integrative Psychiatry Evidence Project. Formal definition of integrative psychiatry, version 1.0. Adopted 30 August 2026. integrativepsychiatryreference.org/definition
This URL is permanent. When the definition is revised, the current text stays at this address and the superseded version is retained below with its adoption and retirement dates, so that a citation to an earlier version remains resolvable.
Version history
| Version | Adopted | Status | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 2026-08-30 | Current | Initial publication. |
References
- Hoenders HJR, Appelo MT, van den Brink EH, Hartogs BMA, de Jong JTVM. The Dutch Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Protocol: to ensure the safe and effective use of complementary and alternative medicine within Dutch mental health care. J Altern Complement Med. 2011;17(12):1197–1201. doi:10.1089/acm.2010.0762
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Complementary, Alternative, or Integrative Health: What’s In a Name? nccih.nih.gov
- Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health. Mission and Vision. imconsortium.org
- Varteresian T, Lavretsky H. Complementary and integrative therapies in psychiatry. FOCUS (Am Psychiatr Publ). 2018;16(1):54–56. PMID 31975900. PMC6519564 doi:10.1176/appi.focus.20170056