How Quickly Multiple Medication Use Can Start: A Medication for Every Complaint on the First Visit Compromising the Ability to Determine Cause and Effect.

This article presents a case demonstrating that multiple medication use can begin on the first outpatient visit if the prescriber makes multiple psychiatric diagnoses and then feels the need to treat each diagnosis with a different central nervous system active medication labeled for each indication. This approach poses potential problems. First, a single drug or perhaps 2 drugs, in this case, may have been sufficient as initial and perhaps final treatment. Second, the prescriber cannot tell which drug(s) is/are producing either a beneficial or an adverse effect. This approach may stem from prescribers thinking that if they have made a diagnosis then they need to treat it with a drug labeled for or clinically used to treat that indication rather than taking a more conservative approach. However, such an approach adversely affects the ability to determine cause-and-effect relationships and hence adversely affects the ability to determine the best way to revise the treatment going forward.