About New Mexico Psych Med Services

As a prescribing psychologist, I draw on the psychotherapy

tools, diagnostic skills and understanding of the therapeutic

relationship to inform my work with the medications. I

integrate elements of solution focused psychotherapy,

cognitive behavioral skills and motivational interviewing as

seems most helpful to a particular patient along with

medications. I also focus on helping patients to better

understand their symptoms and ways of living better with

them.

 I also try to use a concept known as “shared decision

making” which shifts the treatment decision making power

away from a rigid “I’m the doctor, so just do what I say” and

towards discussing pros and cons of different options until we

can find a plan we both feel comfortable with. While that plan

often involves a medication it can also be monitoring the

variations in symptoms to get better data about triggers and

patterns or opting to double down on non-medication

strategies and reevaluate after a period of time. For example, if

someone has a problem getting to sleep, I might prescribe a

medication but will also discuss a variety of non-medication

strategies that also promote good sleep.

I first became interested in using medications when I found my

therapy patients with moderate to severe symptoms often had

difficulty putting the strategies we discussed in psychotherapy

into practice effectively; there was simply too much emotional

pain and agitated, repetitive thinking to allow them to work

well. For me, psychiatric medications make the most sense when someone has tried other approaches such as

psychotherapy, exercise or stress reduction to improve their

symptoms, but they have either been ineffective or have been

difficult to really put into practice. For example, anxiety and

depression symptoms can leave people feeling very “stuck,”

struggling to do both their usual activities and engage in

helping themselves, although they desperately want to do so.

With the correct medications, I can reduce the intensity of the

symptoms by at least half, freeing up emotional energy to fully

engage in the other things that help people get well.