Ronald J. Diamond: The Medication Question: Weighing Your Mental Health Treatment Options for Patients and Their Families

Excerpt

The management of psychiatric medications has traditionally been conducted by physicians. The patients and their families, or those providing support to the patients, would go to an appointment where the physician would meet with the patient, make a diagnosis, and come up with a solution to the diagnosis by prescribing medications. Under this form of traditional physician-driven psychiatric medication management, the patients’ active involvement was limited to whether the diagnosis made sense to them, whether there was enough information about the medications prescribed, and whether other treatment options offered were based on the diagnosis. Under this model, there have been ongoing issues due to persons going off their medications, leading to re-admissions to hospital emergency rooms or to clinics or hospitals for stabilization, fragmented treatments due to constant changes in their physician care, and deterioration in their quality of life because of time spent in the hospitals or correctional facilities. …