ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the downside of the effort by some psychologists, as well as other non-physician health professionals, to add ‘prescription privileges’ to their scope of practice, that is, to enable psychologists to prescribe medications. While doing so would clearly be financially advantageous for them, I question if patients would really benefit by having another profession descend into the abbreviated treatment characterized by the 15-minute, ‘take two tablets and call me in the morning’ approach to treatment. In my experience, this practice rarely benefits the patient over the long term. This chapter also offers a cynical, yet whimsical look at this quest by psychologists for ‘prescription privileges’ by lampooning this aspiration with the suggestion they develop their very own, unique pharma-pseudo-cal formulary. It also parodies the pharmaceutical industry’s penchant for naming medications to resonate with patient hopes for simple, quick solutions to their medical problems, particularly in psychiatry. On a more technical level, I also discuss here some recent substantial critiques of the poor science supposedly validating many psychiatric medications, and suggest that my invented medications may actually not be that much less effective than the real thing.
