The relative explosion in psychopharmacology over recent decades has placed a variety of useful medications in our therapeutic armamentarium, offering a number of treatment modalities and challenging the mental health professional to keep track of new developments and clinical findings. However, less attention has focused on what might be called the ethical underpinnings of this specialty field—an area that takes us beyond the science of prescribing and into the ethics of prescribing. This oversight creates both knowledge and practice gaps. This session draws not only on theory and decision-making paradigms, but also on Dr. Gutheil’s extensive experience as an expert witness and consultant in the medicolegal arena. The goal of this session is to underscore ethical issues in psychopharmacologic prescribing, provide analyses of commonly encountered ethical dilemmas faced by mental health professionals, as well as review case examples illustrating the problems that may arise in clinical practice.
