Prescriptive Authority for Psychologists: A Looming Health Hazard?

Although many psychologists support prescription privileges, the historical training paradigm in psychology includes limited scientific education directly relevant to prescribing medications. Issues related to prescriptive authority for psychologists, including training gaps, attitudes, accreditation, and regulation, are discussed. Current proposals for training psychologists to prescribe deleted the prerequisite coursework in the biological and physical sciences that had been identified by the American Psychological Association's Ad Hoc Task Force on Psychopharmacology. Current proposals do not delineate clear requirements for several key aspects of supervised practical training. Such training limitations raise basic questions about how much additional scientific and medical training would be necessary to ensure that psychologists could provide an acceptable quality of clinical pharmacologic care.