Mental illnesses are a major public health challenge, with many psychiatric symptoms and disorders emerging during childhood and adolescence. Dr. Brotman’s long-term goal is to develop and test novel, targeted treatments informed by advances in neuroscience and digital technology.

Severe irritability is one of the most common reasons children present for mental health care, yet few treatments are available. Developing precise, effective, and scalable interventions is therefore an important public health priority. Advances in digital technology, such as real-time mobile ecological momentary assessment and natural language processing, provide new opportunities to measure symptoms as they occur in daily life, identify mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders, and develop more personalized interventions.

The Section on Neuroscience and Novel Therapeutics developed a brain-based model of irritability that identifies core neural and behavioral mechanisms and uses this model to guide the development of novel interventions (Brotman et al., 2017). This model is grounded in neuroimaging and behavioral research (e.g., Brotman et al., 2006; Brotman et al., 2007; Brotman et al., 2010; Kircanski et al., 2018; Brotman et al., 2024; Haller et al., 2026).

Dr. Brotman is the Principal Investigator of three NIMH treatment protocols: 15-M-0182, Psychological Treatments for Youth with Severe Irritability, which evaluates cognitive behavioral exposure therapy targeting anger and emotion dysregulation; 002713-M, Psychotherapy for Irritability in Youth, which compares active/learning-based psychotherapy interventions with supportive psychotherapy; and 002714-M, Augmenting Parent Management Training with Naturalistic Skills for Child Temper Outbursts Using a Digital Tool, which evaluates the use of a digital intervention to augment parent management training. She is also the Principal Investigator of protocol 02-M-0021, Characterization and Pathophysiology of Severe Mood and Behavioral Dysregulation in Children and Youth, which uses brain imaging and behavioral assessments to investigate the neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying mood, anxiety, irritability, and attention/hyperactivity symptoms in youth.

Together, these studies integrate clinical neuroscience, behavioral science, and digital technology to move from understanding the mechanisms of irritability to developing targeted, scalable treatments for youth.