Quality review of outpatient psychopharmacological practice with APA Task Force criteria

The authors conducted quality review of outpatient psychopharmacological practice in 180 cases with the screening criteria of the APA Task Force on Psychopharmacological Criteria Development and a subset of 12 criteria involving higher-risk practices. Excessive duration of drug treatment was the most common questionable practice, and no relationship was found between frequency of questionable practices and patients' sex, age, social class, or Global Assessment Scale score. An educational exercise based on the audit resulted in a nonsignificant decrease in the higher-risk practices.