Edinburgh Napier University

  100 years ago responsibility for medication management lay with the individual. Patent medicines had been the norm for the previous 300 years. It was as a direct consequence of the laws designed to restrict the use of opiates that prescription only medicines became the norm. This paper tells the story of the regulation of medicines. Of major relevance from the mental health aspect is the recognition that psychiatry as opposed to general medicine rather fortuitously came to control the psychotropic medicines discovered last century. It is within this context that the consequences for mental health nurse prescribers are discussed.