Poll: Should psychologists be allowed to prescribe psychiatric medication?

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Currently 5 states in the United States allow psychologists to prescribe limited psychiatric medication if they’ve taken a class in psychopharmacology.

Should psychologists be allowed to prescribe psychiatric medication?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Undecided

0 voters

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2

My PhD therapist has a hard time diagnosing me.
I say no.

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3

I think psychologists know more about mental illness than doctors so I say yes.

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4

Sure, about the same tiime we start encouraging toddlers to play in traffic with scissors.

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Some of us patients are more intelligent than psychologists and know more about mental illness but you wouldn’t encourage us to self prescribe.

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In the U.S. there are not enough psychiatrists to meet the demand, which can make for excessively long wait times to see one. I was just reading an article that said in Northern Idaho the wait time to see a psychiatrist can be as long as 1 year. This, in my opinion, is a significant factor in Idaho’s high suicide rate.

That being said, I believe that taking one class in psychopharmacology is not sufficient to allow a psychologist to prescribe psychiatric medication.

We’re going to have to incentivize med students to choose psychiatry to meet the demand.

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7

I suppose I’ve never understood the need for both professions. As long as the psychologist communicates with the psychiatrist, I have no problem with it being two different people though.

8

I have always preferred a nurse practitioner to a psychiatrist but I see one of each.

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The difficulty when it comes to prescribing is totally not in choosing which med would produce the best desired effect.

The difficulty is being aware of the physical implications and side effects of those meds on a person who may have other diseases, be on other medication etc. That is by far the hardest bit.

I reckon most of us here could think of a given psych med that may help a psychiatric illness but I think it’s fair to say none of us have the years of experience of pharmacopathology to check we weren’t inadvertently killing this person.

No way should psychologists prescribe.

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