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Psychologists cannot prescribe drugs for the mentally ill or other patients suffering various illnesses for the primary reason that they do not hold a medical degree. As such, the reasons are clear. Psychologists have no business prescribing medications for anyone, including their patients. Medical doctors spend an enormous amount of time learning about human anatomy, drug actions, and drug reactions.

This is not true of psychologists. Should a psychologist wish to prescribe medicine, there is nothing stopping him or her from returning to college to obtain the medical degree giving the right to prescribe medicine. Until that time, psychologists need to leave the dispensing of medication strictly in the hands of the professionals, those with medical degree licenses.

Take note that while psychologists cannot prescribe medication, they are not without any medical knowledge at all. Psychologists can and do send reports to a patient's primary care physician or specialist with recommendations. Often those recommendations include optional drug use therapy to help the patient after the psychologist spends an extensive amount of time with the patient studying behavior, actions, and other idiosyncrasies that might warrant a medicinal benefit. The option to prescribe any medication at all should rest fully in the hands of a medical doctor with the medical degree. Psychologists and psychiatrists treat problems in completely different manners; however this is to say that one will benefit over another. Most doctors in any field will recommend it is better for a patient to take no drugs rather than load the patient with drugs. The reason for this is so a particular drug does not mask symptoms. Psychologists, given the training received today, do not have the ability to differentiate between the need for discussion to work through problems and the requirement of medications to help the patient rise to the area where discussion through the problem is possible.

In a word, no. Psychologists with the educational equivalent of the education today have no business prescribing drugs to their patients. Until the degree of psychology includes extensive medical degree programs such as that prescription-writing physicians hold, the job of psychology should remain discussion, not writing prescriptions.

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