While many other books have focused on what to prescribe for given conditions, this volume is more concerned with how to prescribe: how to talk to patients about medications, how to understand the cultural and social factors that affect how both clinicians and patients relate to medication, and how to build trust in the relationship.
What if, rather than being dispensers of medication, mental health clinicians and primary care clinicians treating mental disorders were collaborators with patients in the prescribing relationship? To prescribe more effectively and to achieve health equity, Warren Kinghorn and Abraham Nussbaum argue, it's necessary--and in Prescribing Together, they offer a roadmap for making it a reality.
In these pages, readers will find practical introductions to key concepts, from cultural formation and structural competency to collaborative deprescribing, and profiles, enlivened by personal anecdotes, of a diverse group of accomplished clinicians that offer evidence-based strategies for building strong alliances in the context of 13 mental disorder categories, including generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and neurocognitive disorders.
By focusing on how, rather than what, to prescribe, this book makes room for patients' lived experiences and interpersonal and social contexts, returning to them a sense of agency and empowering them to set meaningful goals and to be active participants in their own flourishing.
