Is Psychiatry Making America Unhealthy?

"There have long been concerns that psychiatric medications can be used too soon before things like therapy, family interventions, and health promotion activities. There is also a need to help prescribing clinicians safely discontinue or "deprescribe" medications that don't work or are no longer needed. Again, this is nothing new. I have been giving presentations on deprescribing since 2017, and I was hardly the first person to talk about this."

"It was also nice to see in their attached "Dear Colleague" letter directed to folks like me with acknowledgements like "psychiatric medications can play an important and, at times, essential role in treatment." The problem is that embedded in this lovely message about balance and seeking good care and encouraging healthy lifestyles is the subtext that psychiatrists and psychiatric medications are really the problem rather than the solution."

"Evidence that the current HHS initiative is more interested in fighting the psychiatric community rather than working with them can be found in who was invited to their Mental Health and Overmedicalization Summit and, perhaps more importantly, who wasn't. One might logically think that if you truly wanted to improve the prescribing of psychiatric medications, then you might want to bring in folks from the two largest psychiatric professional groups in the country, t"

"Unfortunately, the targeted audience for this campaign was left out and scapegoated. This initiative also ignores the perhaps even bigger problem of under-treatment."

The initiative aims to curb psychiatric overprescribing and promotes balanced care that includes therapy, family interventions, and health promotion activities. It also supports safe discontinuation of medications that no longer work or are no longer needed. The message acknowledges that psychiatric medications can be essential at times. However, the underlying framing suggests psychiatrists and psychiatric medications are the primary problem rather than part of the solution. Evidence of this comes from the composition of invited participants at a mental health and overmedicalization summit, with key psychiatric professional groups notably absent. The initiative also fails to address under-treatment as a potentially larger issue affecting mental health outcomes.

Read at Psychology Today