Responding to society's needs: prescription privileges for psychologists.

The health care revolution has contributed to the natural evolution of the role of psychologists. This has led to the necessity for future psychologists to have the authority to prescribe psychotropic medications in order to offer the best-available, comprehensive treatment to the public. Psychologists' training gives them a unique role in addressing the psychosocial aspects of medical problems, in collaboration with primary-care physicians. Prescribing psychologists are cost-effective, many practice in rural areas where people have no other access to mental health care, and they will be able to treat other underserved populations such as the poor, the elderly, the chronically mentally ill, children, and prisoners in the criminal justice system. Prescribing psychologists will have an increasingly prominent role in future health care policy decisions and practice.