Should psychologist be allowed to prescribe drugs? What
could be the positive and negative side of this provision? This has been one of the most controversial issues in town. Will the psychologists prove to the psychiatrists that they also have the power to prescribe medication or will they failed to do such action on treating the mental-ill persons? Going through the articles and by total comprehension I go after the position of forbidding psychologist on prescribing medication to mental-ill person and that psychiatrists have the greater power to give medications. Psychologists are also professionals on examining how human beings sense, think, learn, know, communicate and interact. They are also constant on collecting facts about behaviour and experience and organizing facts into psychological theories still their training is deficient of assurance that they could successfully treat patients using medication. Psychologists often work closely with psychiatrists and treat many of the same kinds of patient but I don’t think they are well trained in medicine. The range of training and expertise is lacking. On the other hand, psychiatrists are by nature experts and have specialized in mental disorders. They do not only diagnose and treat mental disorders but also conduct researches directed at understanding and preventing them. They are the doctors of medicine who has had postgraduate training in psychiatry. Generally, their task is to account for the diverse sources and manifestations of mental illness. Patients are in need of a doctor who has an “extensive" psycho-pharmacological experience and training to advise and distribute medication. Looking through the background of psychologists they are not well trained about the pros and cons of using medications. The greatest risk on allowing them would be in the lack of training and diagnostic testing that would leave patients at too great a risk. Few psychologists understand the psychopharmacology. Psychologists are primarily trained to do therapy. The medication and combinations of medications prescribed for mental ill people are too dangerous if dosages are not administered correctly. Psychiatrists and psychologists play very different specialized roles in a manic depressants life and I believe they should remain separated. Recommendation: I am not against the expertise of psychologist it is just that their training and awareness on drugs is lacking. If psychologists will insist to ask for a license on drug prescription then they should have further training and specialized on psychopharmacology. The best circumstance is to have a psychiatrist handle your meds and a psychologist to do your therapy. Many medications have side effects and need to be combined with other meds to counteract these side effects which the psychiatrists are expert in. A psychologist neither has the knowledge, training or experience for this nor could make a serious mistake.
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Psychologists Allowed to Prescribe Drugs By Daniel DeNoon, WebMD Medical Newshttp://my.webmd.com/content/article/24/2950_895
March 15, 2002 -- New Mexico is the first state to let psychologists prescribe mental-health drugs. It''s supposed to make things better for patients. Will it? That depends on whom you ask.
This new law applies only to psychologists with a PhD in the science of clinical psychology. In order to prescribe drugs, these psychologists would need to take hundreds of hours of training in pharmacology, physiology, and drug interactions -- after finishing their PhD.
Psychiatrists say that psychologists may have PhDs and extra training, but that doesn''t them medical doctors. Only physicians, they say, have the medical training to understand the complex effects of powerful drugs. Richard Harding, MD, is president of the American Psychiatric Association.
"We are talking about prescribing medicines that have great potential for harm or good, and about who should be allowed to do that," Harding tells WebMD. "It should not be a matter of legislation but of training. Physicians are set up to do this in ways that will have not even entered the mind of psychologists when they have finished their training program. The idea that a brief course will let them bypass that whole process built up over a number of years -- well, it is not the way I would like to see my family treated."
Psychologists say that there are too few psychiatrists to go around. They note that family doctors -- not psychiatrists -- now write eight out of 10 prescriptions for mental-health drugs. Psychologist Elaine LeVine, PhD, chairs the task force on prescriptive authority for the New Mexico Psychological Association.
"Psychologists are better trained in determining which
medication might be best for a particular patient''s mental-health condition, because that is what we work with every day," LeVine tells WebMD. "When psychologists work hand-in-hand with family doctors, patients are going to get better care. We spend the time it takes with the patient to really know about their psychological functioning."
Harding says that this isn''t the issue.
"Let''s say I''m a psychologist and I decide to prescribe for an individual with depression," Harding says. "The patient also has diabetes and heart disease. What should I know about that? Is it important? They are saying they''re just dealing with the mind. But psychotropic medications are very complicated things. They affect many body systems. That is what is so scary. They don''t recognize what they are getting into. Some of the medications we are dealing with now have a high potential for problems. The side effects and interactions with other drugs can be very serious if not lethal."
Family practitioner Dino W. Ramzi, MD, teaches family medicine at Atlanta''s Emory University. He agrees with Harding that prescribing medicine is something that requires a doctor''s supervision.
"Psychologists can get into a lot of trouble, but if they keep open lines of communication with a physician, I''ve got no problem with them prescribing," he tells WebMD.
Russ Newman, PhD, JD, is the executive director of professional practice for the American Psychological Association. He says that psychiatrists'' dire predictions are nothing new.
"The idea that psychologists would put patients at risk is an old argument that psychiatry first brought up in the 1960s, when psychologists were licensed to practice independently," Newman says. "Now every state licenses psychologists and those fears have been put to rest. In the 1980s when psychologists were being licensed to practice unsupervised in hospitals, psychiatrists said patients would be at risk. Now they do and there is no risk. Here in the 21st century we are hearing the very same argument that if you let psychologists do something different, somehow patient safety will be put at risk. There is no data that shows that is the case."
Psychologist Vincent J. Giannetti, PhD, is a professor of pharmaceutical administration at the Duquesne University School of Pharmacy in Pittsburgh. He doesn''t oppose prescribing by psychologists -- but like Harding, he wonders if psychologists know what they are getting into. One of his principal worries is that psychologists will forget that drugs don''t cure most mental illness.
"I can say unequivocally there is no antidepressant that cures depression. There is no anti-anxiety medicine that cures anxiety," Giannetti tells WebMD. "I think we always need a strong and consistent voice -- while not anti-medicine -- for the psychotherapeutic approach. T