Pros And Cons Of Pps

While there are many proponents for granting prescription privileges (PPs) to clinical psychologists, others have offered concerning warnings that allowing PPs could change the fundamental direction in which psychology is evolving (DeNelsky, 1996). This paper will argue that if the profession were to allow PPs, it would surely travel down a similar historical path as psychiatry and fall blindly into the same hazards along the way: surrendering an evidence-based biopsychosocial approach to the understanding and amelioration of mental disorders for a predominantly medical approach, resulting in the deterioration of psychotherapy and assessment skills (McGrath, Wiggins, Sammons, Levant, Brown, & Stock, 2004). The main arguments supporting PPs

Approximately 45 years ago, psychiatry made the decision to increasingly emphasize psychoactive medications and other medical interventions, and seemingly, did not consciously decide to move away from psychotherapeutic services; yet this is exactly what happened. Psychiatry's further move away from psychotherapy as more pharmacological interventions are developed is cited as support for the notion that psychology would fall into a similar way of functioning, moving towards the quick and easy allure of the prescription pad and away from the biopsychosocial model (DeNelsky, 1996). Proponents seem to forget the notion that part of psychology’s appeal may come through its differences with psychiatry, as it offers treatment options not dominated by medication (Bieliauskas, 1992). Instead of pursing PPs and doubling up professions by morphing into quasi-psychiatrists, Wollersheim and Walsh (1993) suggest professional psychology should refine and improve its strengths: applying evidence-based knowledge to a wide range of personal and interpersonal problems through applications of behavioral and psychosocial skills, thereby allowing clients the autonomy to change and improve their functioning through employing said

Achieving short-term symptom relief through the use of medication decreases the incentive to seek lasting change through psychotherapy, and consequently, patients tend to attribute help as coming from outside of themselves, rather than seeing improvement as the product of their own efforts (Gutierrez & Silk, 1998). As a result, clinical psychologists would be sentencing their clients to lie on the electric floor of biological determinism and ensuring they have no other avenue than to offer a whimper of genetically imposed learned helplessness towards their problems. If practicing psychologists are successful in gaining PPs, this endeavor would change the trajectory of the entire discipline by undoubtedly allowing it to sink into the quagmire of practicing psychologists who offer no more than knee-jerk reactions of supplying mood-altering medications to those in distress. These irreversible consequences would inevitably medicalise psychology and devaluate the non-pharmacological elements of the practice, consequently slipping into a strange bio-morphism of a discipline that is indiscernible from psychiatry. If psychology is to adhere to the biopsychosocial model, a