The Presence and Future of Prescription Privileges

Some of the current changes that can be seen in regards to prescription privileges include changes in the ways that physicians and mental health professionals are able to prescribe medications to their patients. According to Brenda Smith of the APA (2012), currently patients receive their medications for psychological conditions by a physician usually without having been evaluated by a mental health practitioner according to the CDC.

The trend includes individuals to visit their general health practitioners in order to receive psychotropic medications such as antidepressants and anxiolytics. The problem with individuals receiving these medications from other sources include: deterrence from alternate treatment interventions that include CBT or psychoanalysis.

Changes currently described as happening in the realm of prescription privileges include the expansion of prescription writing privileges to mental health professional such as license psychologists that are well-versed in psychopharmacology as well as the dangers of overuse and over prescription of psychotropic medications. According to the American psychological Association (Smith, 2012), several states programs for psychologists designed in respect to prescription privileged programs have been approved.

The states include Louisiana, New Mexico and the US armed forces. Additionally according to the American psychological Association (Smith, 2012), there are several bills being considered in many other states regarding the expansion of prescription drug privileges but many of these measures have been met by opposition from the American Medical Association and the American psychiatric Association due to concerns about the adequacy of each training programs in dispensing of prescription medication and overall patient safety. . Changes in Ethics of Drug Treatment Some of the decisive changes described above in the ethical use of drug treatments for individuals that might have a psychological disorder include the consideration of clinical level testing for psychotropic medication prescription. Special attention should be giving to understanding informed consent and any challenges that may be presented and prescribing ethically medications to special populations such as children.

According to the Gerald Tietz of the Washington law review (1986), indicates that it is well within a practitioner’s scope of duty to inform the patient of significant effects were injuries that may be related to the prescribing of any particular pharmacological treatment. This informed consent should be expanded to include the harms were dangerous presented also with non-use of additional treatment interventions such as therapy or CBT.

Additional trends identified in ambulance pediatrics (Cooper, Arbogast & Ding, 2006), or the trends and the prescription of antipsychotic medications for children in the United States of America. The information taken from the national ambulatory medical care survey in regards to the US population indicated that between 1995 and 2002 there were nearly 6,000,000 visits to health providers by children in the US that had been subscribed or prescribed antipsychotic medications.

Nearly 1/3 of the prescriptions for lease populations were provided by non-mental health service professionals. The study of the department of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville also indicated that over half of the prescriptions for these children were given based on behavioral indications or affective disorders which find a way have not been fully studied for use in children.

These changes tend to speak more towards the trends and blocking of measures to expand prescription privileges due to the fact that they affect children as a special group. It appears that the special groups and factors such as overprescribing of psychotropic medications fueled a change in the ethics of drug treatment. As these factors become rectified, so will be trends were changes towards allowing privilege of prescription to mental health professionals and expansion of ethical considerations for those individuals prescribing these drugs.