Ravi Singareddy, MD

The founder and medical director of Empower Psychiatry & Sleep in north metro Atlanta.

12 articles on KevinMD · Listed in Experts by KevinMD

About

Ravi Singareddy is the founder and medical director of Empower Psychiatry & Sleep in north metro Atlanta, where he leads an interventional psychiatry practice offering transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and Spravato (esketamine) for treatment-resistant depression. Double board-certified in psychiatry and sleep medicine, he brings more than two decades of clinical and academic experience to patients who haven't found relief with medications alone. He is affiliated with Emory Healthcare.

His interest in neuromodulation dates back to his years as associate professor of psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine. There, he taught annually on vagus nerve stimulation and novel depression therapies, and he published on long-term combined electroconvulsive therapy and vagus nerve stimulation in the American Journal of Psychiatry. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed papers on sleep disorders, insomnia, anxiety, and depression, with work appearing in Sleep, the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, and Psychiatry Research.

Singareddy is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and practices measurement-based care, tracking outcomes to guide every treatment decision. He shares updates on Instagram.

Latest articles

Conditions and diseases

Esketamine for depression often works better by month 3

Ravi Singareddy, MD

November 10, 2026Nov 10, 2026

The most common pitch for esketamine has been speed: a nasal spray that can ease treatment-resistant depression within days, not weeks. But a new systematic review and meta-analysis in the Journal of Affective Disorders suggests the more useful clinical lesson may be the opposite. When the authors pooled nine observational studies of intranasal esketamine used in routine practice, they found that patients were about five times more likely to be …

Conditions and diseases

TMS vs. Spravato: which to try first for depression

Ravi Singareddy, MD

November 3, 2026Nov 3, 2026

Most of us know the moment. A patient has failed two, sometimes three, adequate antidepressant trials, maybe an augmentation agent too. They are still depressed, often demoralized, and now asking, sometimes skeptically, what comes next. For two decades, the honest…

For two decades, the honest answer was “another medication,” with modest expectations. In STAR*D, fewer than 15 percent of patients reached remission with a third medication trial. Two FDA-authorized options have changed that conversation: transcranial magnetic …

Conditions and diseases

TMS and esketamine work. Community clinics are the test.

Ravi Singareddy, MD

November 1, 2026Nov 1, 2026

For most of the past two decades, community practice has managed treatment-resistant depression (TRD) the way STAR*D described: one medication after another, with remission rates falling below 15 percent by the third trial. Repetitive and deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), FDA-cleared since 2008, and intranasal esketamine (Spravato), approved in 2019, have changed what a community psychiatrist can offer. In pooled trial data and in real-world cohorts, the two …

Conditions and diseases

What pharmacogenetic testing can and can’t do in depression

Ravi Singareddy, MD

October 27, 2026Oct 27, 20262

More of my patients now arrive with a pharmacogenetic report, an ad promising to "end trial and error," or an MTHFR result from an online forum. Others ask for a blood test or brain scan to "prove" their depression. These…

More of my patients now arrive with a pharmacogenetic report, an ad promising to “end trial and error,” or an MTHFR result from an online forum. Others ask for a blood test or brain scan to “prove” their depression. These requests are reasonable. Patients want objective answers to a frustrating process. But the marketing has run ahead of the evidence, and the conversation increasingly falls to us. Here is how …

Conditions and diseases

Accelerated TMS: what the SAINT and SWIFT numbers mean

Ravi Singareddy, MD

October 25, 2026Oct 25, 2026

More and more patients now ask me about "five-day TMS for depression." Some have read about Stanford's protocol. Others have seen clinics advertise two-week treatment. Referring colleagues ask a version of the same question: Is accelerated transcranial magnetic stimulation better,…

More and more patients now ask me about “five-day TMS for depression.” Some have read about Stanford’s protocol. Others have seen clinics advertise two-week treatment. Referring colleagues ask a version of the same question: Is accelerated transcranial magnetic stimulation better, and which protocol should patients look for?

The honest answer starts with a caveat. SAINT, now marketed as Stanford Neuromodulation Therapy (SNT), has reported higher remission rates than SWIFT, an …

Conditions and diseases

Esketamine vs. ketamine: what to ask before you refer

Ravi Singareddy, MD

October 19, 2026Oct 19, 20263

In my practice, more and more patients arrive with a ketamine clinic advertisement in hand. Many have already asked their primary care physician, "Should I try this?" The honest answer depends on a distinction those advertisements routinely blur: The "ketamine"…

In my practice, more and more patients arrive with a ketamine clinic advertisement in hand. Many have already asked their primary care physician, “Should I try this?” The honest answer depends on a distinction those advertisements routinely blur: The “ketamine” offered for depression is not a single, standardized therapy.

On one side is intranasal esketamine (Spravato), the S-enantiomer of ketamine. The FDA approved it in 2019 for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) …

Physician voices

Why physician depression goes untreated, and what helps

Ravi Singareddy, MD

October 18, 2026Oct 18, 2026

Few of us would tell a patient with moderate-to-severe depression to wait it out alone. Many of us do exactly that for ourselves. Physicians develop depression at rates comparable to or higher than the general population, yet we are among…

A 2025 JAMA strategic review found that fear of stigma was a primary barrier to seeking help for …

Physician voices

Sleep deprivation in doctors is a culture problem

Ravi Singareddy, MD

October 13, 2026Oct 13, 2026

The clocks fall back on Sunday, Nov. 1, and most of us will tell our patients the same sensible things we always do: protect your sleep window, keep a consistent wake time, treat insomnia before it becomes chronic. Then we…

Medicine has a culture problem around rest. Somewhere in training we absorb the idea …

Conditions and diseases

Sleep apnea and depression: Screen before a third drug

Ravi Singareddy, MD

October 12, 2026Oct 12, 2026

In a community study of 700 men, 43 percent of those who had both obstructive sleep apnea and insomnia met criteria for depression. That compared with 22 percent of those with insomnia alone and just 8 percent of those with…

That gradient captures something most of us see every week but rarely name. The patient who comes to me on referral has usually cycled through two or three …

Conditions and diseases

5 OCD screening questions every clinician should ask

Ravi Singareddy, MD

October 6, 2026Oct 6, 2026

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is one of the most delayed diagnoses in psychiatry, and much of that delay happens in offices like ours. Patients typically notice their first symptoms in adolescence or early adulthood but are not correctly diagnosed until roughly a decade later. One outpatient study found an average of about 12.8 years between symptom onset and diagnosis, and a meta-analysis of 31 studies put the pooled duration of untreated …

Health policy

Access to interventional psychiatry should not end downtown

Ravi Singareddy, MD

October 5, 2026Oct 5, 2026

A standard course of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for depression means coming to the clinic five days a week for four to six weeks, roughly 20 to 36 sessions. That is because response depends mainly on the number of…

Esketamine (Spravato) carries a different but equally demanding logistical load. Under its FDA safety program, known as a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS), each …

Conditions and diseases

After 2 failed antidepressants, raise TMS and esketamine

Ravi Singareddy, MD

September 27, 2026Sep 27, 2026

In community interventional psychiatry practices, the typical referral looks the same week after week. The patient is in the fifth or sixth year of a major depressive episode and carries a list of four, five, sometimes seven antidepressants they have “failed.” They are finally sent for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or esketamine (Spravato) long after the point when those treatments would have done the most good. By the time the …