New Evidence That Prescribing Psychologists Can Save Lives

Jeffrey A. SingerRemoving barriers to prescribing psychologists (RxPs) saves patients the inconvenience and added expense of seeing a  psychiatrist or other health care practitioner that states license to prescribe psychiatric medications. Such practitioners include family physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants—even general surgeons like me. Now comes a study showing that it also saves lives.InEffects of Giving Psychologists Prescriptive Authority: Evidence From a  Natural Experiment in the United States, researchers publishing in the journalHealth Policy used data from the National Vital Statistics System of the National Center for Health Statistics from 1999 –2015 to evaluate suicide rates before and after New Mexico and Louisiana expanded psychologists’ scope of practice to include prescriptive authority. The authors concluded:Expanding the scope of practice of doctoral ‐​level psychologists who have completed training in clinical psychopharmacology to include prescriptive authority is associated with a 5 to 7 pp [percentage point] decrease in suicides in New Mexico and Louisiana. The largest reductions in suicides are for male, white, married, single, and mi ddle‐​aged sub‐​populations. The results are robust to several different additional specifications and frameworks.And:In the U.S., expanding scope of practice for specifically trained psychologists to include prescriptive authority may help address poor mental health care outcomes...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 7, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs