Indications.

摘要

May, 2008. Effective treatments for psychiatric disorders, as for all medical disorders, are discovered as a result of a complex matrix of experience, theory, research, and serendipity. In this country, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the federal agency responsible for evaluating available evidence to determine which drugs are safe and effective to treat which illnesses. FDA-approved indications for drug use are important and helpful guides, but the necessary scope of the practice of medicine goes well beyond the role of the FDA, Drugs may be FDA-approved for selected populations (e.g., adults with a particular condition), but there may be insufficient research about the use of the same drugs with different populations (e.g., children with the same disorder or with a combination of disorders). In such cases, it is the obligation of responsible physicians to carefully consider whether or not to recommend "off-label" use of a medication based on clinical experience and the best evidence available,