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Decisions about drug therapy II: Expert opinion in a hypothetical situation
Author(s) -
Overall John E.,
Hollister Leo E.
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830170403
Subject(s) - antipsychotic drug , psychology , expert opinion , drug , psychopharmacology , psychotherapist , antipsychotic , management science , clinical psychology , psychiatry , medicine , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , intensive care medicine , economics
The drug choices of experts in clinical psychopharmacology were studied in terms of their responses to case reports containing brief narrative histories and detailed symptom and behavior descriptions. The purposes of the study were to examine similarities and differences in the conceptions of appropriate indications for psychotherapeutic drugs and to develop a model of the consensus decision behavior. The several judges were found to behave similarly in their selections of drug treatments. Three major classes of drugs were consistently chosen for use with patients having distinctly different types of symptom profiles. Prototype clinical profiles representing the experts' conceptions of appropriate indications for antipsychotic, antianxiety and antidepressant drugs were derived, and a model of decision behavior representing the consensus of the judges was constructed. The study of clinical decision behavior in the manner of this investigation appears to have potential usefulness as another approach in clinical psychopharmacologic research.