Lightning Talk

After Prozac: How Psychiatry Became the Last Interprofessional Frontier to Conquer

Wednesday, September 17, 2025, 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm CDT
medication check modelpsychiatryoverprescribingsplit model of care

Psychiatry finds itself in a curious clinical environment post-Prozac. The medical model has generated a split model of care whereby psychiatry remains one of the few solo-practitioner fields where very little collaboration occurs with other health and social care providers. There are exceptions: the VA, public health clinics, FQHCS, and hospitals. However, the majority of psychiatrists practice in a community setting, engaged in medication management in person and through telehealth - the "med-check" model of psychiatric care. This paper draws upon 2 decades of ethnographic research to highlight and interrogate the split model of care that psychiatry, it will be argued, needs to rectify through interprofessional education and practice. Psychiatry must hold a mirror to itself and ask: how can we not work towards full collaboration with the psychotherapists when we diagnose depression, prescribe medication and then hand off to other specialists with no ongoing collaboration. The problem remains structural, cultural and financial and this paper will offer interprofessional strategies for correcting this curious split in the care of patients with mental health disorders.