Since 2017, Prof. Kaess has served as Director and Chief Physician of the University Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at UPZ Bern. His clinical and scientific work focuses on adolescent mental health, particularly self-harm, suicidal behaviour, and the development of emotion regulation difficulties. An increasingly central part of his research is the development and evaluation of digital approaches to prevention, early intervention, and personalised treatment.
Connecting digital innovation with clinical research
Prof. Kaess combines clinical expertise with research on digital interventions and data-driven mental healthcare. His expertise spans self-harm, suicidal behaviour, and disorders associated with emotion dysregulation, including depression and borderline personality disorder. His research includes online interventions and machine-learning approaches to predicting self-harm using clinical and multimodal data.
His research explores how digital data and tools can support earlier intervention and personalised treatment, with particular attention to the clinical usefulness and fairness of the tools available, including AI. His international collaborations include the STAR self-harm consortium, which conducts a large-scale randomised controlled trial evaluating an online intervention for young people who self-harm. Within the EU-funded SAMPO consortium, he leads the development, delivery, and evaluation of digital toolboxes targeting mental health risks and strengthening resilience.
At the University of Bern, he coordinates SEEK-MH (Supporting Effective Engagement and Knowledge for Mental Health), an interfaculty consortium connecting life-span psychiatry, clinical psychology, medical ethics, and communication and media studies. With an initial focus on depression, SEEK-MH investigates digital help-seeking and information use across the lifespan, including search engines, social media, and AI-based chatbots. It aims to develop interventions and practical guidance that help people access reliable support while addressing misinformation and algorithmic bias.
A new perspective on the DDM Board
Prof. Kaess joins the DDM Board as the representative of the University Psychiatric Center Bern (UPZ), giving psychiatry and the wider mental healthcare community a voice on the Board. He brings expertise in developmental neuroscience, digital mental health, and clinical evaluation, and will help connect technological innovation with the needs of patients, families, and clinicians.
