An Interactional Approach for Pharmacopsychologists and Psychologists: Gender Concerns

A knowledge base of culturally sensitive psychotropic pharmacotherapy is encouraged to help patients receive accurate diagnoses and beneficial treatment. Research is best informed if the complexity of individuals is directly addressed beyond main effects in research designs. The interactions of age, sex/gender, race/ethnicity, and cultural practices, as well as medication effects, need to be studied. Reporting data with distinctive characteristics exhibited by different ethnic-gender subgroups provides rich information with which psychologists can treat patients more effectively as well as ethically. Conceptual models of prescribing need to include perspectives of the whole person. An interactional model is one model that would address physiological, psychological, and sociocultural dimensions.