This guidance relates to psychiatric drugs that have been prescribed in the course of clinical practice. It does not tackle illicit or recreational drug use (nor prescribed painkiller/opioid use) and any associated problems. Naturally, such hard and fast distinctions may belie clinical complexity, given some clients may present with multiple prescribed and non-prescribed dependencies.
A further area beyond scope is first, the impact of other physical health conditions on both drug and talking therapy, and conversely, the impact of prescribed psychiatric drugs on physical health (beyond those problems associated with dependence and withdrawal). As important as these areas are, the number of variables involved renders making any general statements unfeasible, beyond recommending that such adverse reactions must always be discussed with the prescriber.
Finally, systemic, child and family therapies, as well as social prescribing are not discussed in this guidance, although we clearly recognise the vital contribution they make in this area. The parameters of a project must be drawn somewhere, and ours reflect pragmatic constraints rather than any implied grading of the relative importance of the topics omitted.