New research: Stahl defends ‘off-label’ prescribing

Prescribing medicine not covered by the drug’s official label is necessary, says world-renowned psychiatry Professor and Clinician Dr Stephen Stahl.

Prominent psychiatrist, author and editor-in-chief of the neuropsychiatric journal CNS Spectrums, Dr Stephen M Stahl vigorously defends off-label drug prescribing for psychotropic drugs in the popular feature 'Brainstorms'.

The first 'Brainstorms' feature was published in 2000 in another journal, and the feature quickly established itself as one of the most popular, widely read, highly cited, and regularly downloaded articles in the field. Now integrated into CNS Spectrums, Stahl uses the well-regarded feature to jump into the current debate about off-label drug prescribing.

In his defence ‘Off-label prescribing: best practice or malpractice?’, Stahl defends using a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved medicine in a manner not covered by the drug’s official label, Stahl points out that this is necessary in an estimated 80 per cent of psychiatric treatments, as these complex and highly individual illnesses have no medicines specific to them.

CNS Spectrums is the Journal of the Neuroscience Education Institute and is published by Cambridge Journals.