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By Alan F. Schatzberg, M.D.
In the past decade, we have witnessed a rapid expansion of the psychopharmacological approaches used to treat psychiatric patients with a wide variety of disorders. The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, mixed uptake blocks, anticonvulsants, and atypical anti-psychotics have all had a tremendous impact on the lives of countless patients. These agents are safer than their predecessors of 15 years ago and are effective in a wider range of patients. Thus, the practitioner has had to absorb a tremendous amount of information about new drugs over this decade and has frequently had to work hard at developing a biopsychosocial model both for understanding etiology and for choosing and implementing comprehensive treatment strategies that contain modern pharmacological arms.
To learn about biological psychiatry and psychopharmacology, clinicians have employed various tools: reading peer-reviewed journal articles, reviewing special issues of or supplements to journals, studying textbooks, and attending continuing medical education (CME) and non-CME didactic programs. These approaches have provided solid foundations for participants, albeit some of them may be overly tinged by proprietary or product-oriented interests of pharmaceutical companies.
Although practitioners are better grounded in psychopharmacology than they have ever been, keeping up with the latest has become ever more difficult. The constantly expanding field of psychopharmacology means that a significant proportion of practitioners cannot be totally up to date, and a sizable proportion will be somewhat, but understandably, behind. This is the case not only for many practitioners but also for academics, although some of us in the latter category might be a bit chagrined to admit it.
What can or should we do about it? Dr. Rodrigo Muņoz, APA president, has asked me to chair a task force on how best to disseminate new scientifically based information in the area of psychopharmacology to the field. In addition to me, the members of the task force are Drs. Richard Balon, C. Edward Coffey, John Feighner (cochair), Jack Gorman, James Krajeski (consultant), Susan McElroy, and Charles Nemeroff. Ron McMillen of the American Psychiatric Press Inc. will staff the task force. The task force thus includes members who are involved with the American Journal of Psychiatry, Psychiatric News, and APPI, the three major communication outlets for APA.
Our charge from President Muņoz is to help to bring to the attention of APA members "the best science in the prescription and use of psychotropics." He has asked us to look into how we can optimize the speed and completeness of distribution of such new knowledge-exploring various modes of communication. The members and consultants of the task force have been chosen because of their experience in psychopharmacology and communications.
Our intent is to provide over the next year a series of recommendations for new programs that can be developed to improve the accuracy, objectivity, and speed of dissemination of information on psychopharmacology currently available to our members. We believe such dissemination can help all of us to practice at a higher level. We welcome suggestions from you on how we can best achieve our goals, and we appreciate Dr. Muņoz's confidence in asking us to serve. Dr. Schatzberg is chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.