Abstract
While the legal regulations regarding prescribing psychotropic medications are not inherently different from prescribing other medications, psychotropic medications do raise somewhat different issues with regard to informed consent and treatment monitoring for a number of reasons. Because these medications are utilized to treat mental illness, rather than physical illness, privacy issues are typically more strict, the fact that the patient has a mental illness may alter treatment compliance, and the nature of the patient’s mental illness may increase risk of self-harm and suicide. Some classes of psychotropic medication also require including particular information in the informed consent process and special attention to aspects of treatment monitoring. For children and adolescents in state custody, states are increasingly utilizing adopting oversight procedures to guard against overprescribing of psychotropic medications.
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Ash, P. (2018). Medicolegal Considerations in Prescribing Psychiatric Medications to Youth. In: Vinson, S., Vinson, E. (eds) Pediatric Mental Health for Primary Care Providers. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90350-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90350-7_9
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