In Search for an Evidence-based Rôle for Psychiatry [1]

"Despite their relative inefficacy and dangerousness, psychiatric medications can be helpful (as a last resort, and for a short period). Therefore, mental health teams do need access to people with prescribing rights. So there is a useful role for psychiatrists, but only if they take an evidence-based approach, which concedes that a range of more effective and safer treatments should be offered first, that adverse effects should be fully disclosed and that no medical treatment should be forced on anyone against their will. In other medical specialties forcing a patient to receive a treatment constitutes ethical misconduct and is severely punished."