Psychotropic medications are commonly used across psychological disorders and across the lifespan. Indeed, more people are on more psychotropics today than ever before. To further complicate this issue, many individuals are taking multiple medications to address myriad behavioral and emotional conditions. Medications play a critical role in the treatment outcomes of our clients and because psychologists often play a key role in the multidisciplinary delivery of treatment, a fundamental knowledge-base in psychopharmacology should be a necessity in their training.

The American Psychological Association has established basic expectations of training within a graduate curriculum. At present, psychopharmacology is not considered a requirement for accreditation and, consistently providing coursework in this area faces challenges. As a result, most APA-accredited programs are failing to provide the fundamentals in psychopharmacology to students. This, obviously, can have a direct impact on the provision of psychological services, treatment outcomes, and client satisfaction. This discussion will provide results from a survey of APA-accredited programs on the availability of psychopharmacology coursework, challenges faced in providing those courses, and exploration of the impact when this information is not available to psychologists entering the field.

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