Prescribing Psychiatric Medications
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- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Publication date:
- 14 August 2026
- 10 September 2026
- ISBN:
- 9781108689229
- 9781108723466
- Dimensions:
- Weight & Pages:
- Dimensions:
- (234 x 156 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 0.25kg, 300 Pages
- Subjects:
- Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology, Medicine, Psychiatry
You may already have access via personal or institutional login- Subjects:
- Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology, Medicine, Psychiatry
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Book description
There is a growing need for academic enquiry acknowledging the challenges surrounding successful prescribing for mental health. This book focuses on the act and skills of psychiatric prescribing and its psychosocial context, bringing together differing views on prescribing, assessing the challenges, and identifying useful principles and guidelines together. Covering a multitude of topics including interpreting and handling uncertainty in the clinical evidence, accounting for phases of illness and natural course, collaborating with allied professionals, addressing the meaning of medications, minimising structural barriers to medications; accounting for interactive effects of dietary factors, supplements and alternative remedies, and shared decision-making approaches. Case vignettes and accompanying analysis frame the issues relevant for psychiatric prescribers and offering an approach that strikes a balance between the biological, psychological and social elements of prescribing. For psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and all those involved with the care of patients with mental health conditions.
Reviews
‘This is a thoughtful and inspiring book that emphasises professional humility and patient dignity. The ideas and practices it puts forward are, at the same time, revolutionary and disturbingly obvious (at least when brought into one's consciousness). Everyone involved in the prescribing or monitoring of mental health medication should read this book. Everyone. All readers will find themselves changed. And for the better.’
David Taylor - PhD FFRPS FRCPharm FRCPEdin FRCPsych(Hon), Director of Pharmacy and Pathology, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London
‘This book is a much-needed corrective to reductionist pressures in contemporary psychiatry. While most psychopharmacology texts explore what to prescribe, Cahill and Gallagher emphasize that how one prescribes matters equally… and perhaps more. They offer clinicians a rich, practical framework for leveraging the power of the psychosocial dimension of pharmacotherapy: fostering genuine partnership, deepening alliance, mobilizing patient agency, and engaging helpful and harmful meanings attached to medications. Moving from the level of individual treatments to the broader context, chapters also emphasize how prescribing does not occur in a vacuum, with social and structural contexts representing clinical realities, not peripheral concerns, for effective pharmacotherapy. For the many clinicians drawn to psychiatric practice by an interest in people and in meaning, this book helps move beyond the mere prescription pad toward a more humane, just, evidence-informed, and person-centered pharmacotherapy.’
David Mintz - MD, Author of Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology: Caring for the Treatment-Resistant Patient
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