D.O. VS MD?

A Harris County Judge has recently ruled that only petitions from physicians who are M.D.’s will be accepted for involuntary orders for psychiatric treatment.  I thought this thinking went out with high button boots. Doctors of Osteopathy are as capable as Medical Doctors to provide psychiatric treatment.

Sometimes we think there are philosophical reasons for a persons’s choice but on closes inspection, the reason is sometimes financial. Essentially there is no difference between the training and treatment of the mentally ill by either profession. This has long been accepted. One’s personal bias is the difference. I worked on the psychiatric unit of an osteopathic hospital for seven years and seven years on the psychiatric unit in a regular medical hospital. There was essentially no difference that I was able to observe except osteopathic doctors tend to be more conservative in prescribing medications. Moreover, they tend to use more “atypicals”.  Atypicals are prescribed in lower dosages and are more expensive. One of my first trials in Texas was a mental health case in Galveston.  I lost at the Probate level. The case was appealed and the 1st Court of Appeals wrote a fifteen page opinion in favor of my client and ruled that it was going to be the new precedent in the area. It was essentially the osteopathic approach to mental health arguing for strict interpretation of the code and the use of more atypicals because the old drugs being used in Texas cause Tardive dyskinesia, psychomotor retardation, memory loss, and in the combination it was being prescribed to my client at the time–cancer of the brain stem. I argued that the risk outweighed the benefits of using those drugs when others were available even if they cost more. This was a victory for my client. Now sixteen years later we are still hearing the old arguments from the seventies. I do not know the reason for this judge’s ruling but it is without any merit that I can detect. It is pure bias. It should be overruled and patients should be treated by the best available psychiatrist  to treat them. Texas has short resources. It cannot afford to reduce those resources more by limiting the treating doctors to a particular group only when more are capable of providing quality care. It is time to put the D.O.vs M.D. argument back on the shelf and start acting in the best interest of persons seeking treatment. They deserve the best treatment available by a physician trained as a D.O. or M.D. There is essentially no difference in the training of either physician.