Mental Health Blogs

While I think it’s been acknowledged for years that family physicians and other PCPs write the majority of scrips for psych meds, the scale to which that’s going on, as reported in a new study, is pretty eye-opening and concerning:

“They found that general practitioners prescribed the bulk of prescriptions in two main categories — 62 percent of antidepressants and 52 percent of stimulants.

“The stimulants were mainly drugs for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. About 25 percent of all stimulant prescriptions examined were written by pediatricians, they reported in the journal Psychiatric Services.

“Family doctors also wrote 37 percent of prescriptions for drugs used to treat psychosis and prescribed 22 percent of anti-mania medications, the study showed.”

Problems are common with these meds even when prescribed by a psychiatrist and a whole load of people I know personally who’ve had bad experiences with anti-depressants have had it happen at the hands of a PCP casually giving them whatever anti-depressant they felt like. You’ve also got to wonder if there’s anything approaching adequate follow-up or if your average PCP is well-informed about problems with these drugs. (The study itself is not online yet.)

That said, I know PCPs here in Seattle who flatly refuse to prescribe psych meds of any kind for any reason.

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4. ADHD Meds Abuse Increases Dramatically
5. Beyond Meds Goes On Hiatus