What is it about?
Research indicates that at least 40% of persons with mental disorders cannot access needed mental health services. In particular, there is a national need for patient access to pharmacotherapy (treatment of mental disorders using prescribed medications). In meeting this national demand, this article presents a curricular model in clinical psychopharmacology for educating psychologists to prescribe medications for mental disorders. Additionally, future directions of the field are discussed.
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Why is it important?
This article addresses how prescribing psychologists can help meet the mental health care needs of the nation for conditions requiring medications for the treatment of mental disorders. This education and training is best initiated at the predoctoral level. An integrated program incorporating both clinical psychology and psychopharmacology education and training is recommended by the authors for students in health service psychology programs .
Perspectives
Psychologists with advanced training in clinical psychopharmacology have been safely prescribing psychotropic medications in the US for nearly 30 years. Close to half of the 60 million adults and youth living with mental illness in the US go without any treatment. Part of the access difficulty for pharmacotherapy is due to the fact that 40% of psychiatrists practicing in exclusive cash-only private practices. The net effect is that, predominantly, the affluent can obtain pharmacotherapy in a time efficient manner, whereas minority and rural patients often must wait weeks and months for an appointment to receive needed medications. In our recently published article, we document how psychologists can be trained to learn the needed skills to competently prescribe psychotropic medications to mental health patients at the predoctoral level, rather than postdoctorally.
Gerardo Rodriguez-Menendez
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Toward a new predoctoral model: Education and training in clinical psychopharmacology., Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, February 2022, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pha0000514.
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