I recommend that all of my patients read the following tips — they are important basic lessons which I have learned over many years which will help to improve your recovery, lessen the hassles of treatment, and improve the safety of your psychiatric care.

1.  Bring all of your medications, in their bottles, to every clinic visit.  This is important in case there are discrepancies between the medications and doses recorded in the doctor’s clinical notes and the recollection which a patient may have of what he or she is taking.

2.  Write down the name of each medication (including both the generic name and the brand name) and the doses in milligrams for each on a 3″ x 5″ index card.  Bring this card in with you to every clinic visit, and amend it each time a medication is changed.  Review your medications frequently in order to memorize their names and dosages.  Also, carry this card in your wallet or purse wherever you go.  This important in case you should be in an auto accident and get taken in to an emergency room — if you are in an unconscious state, the physicians at the ER will want to know what medications you may be taking, since this could affect the techniques they use to save your life.

3.  If you are having a crisis or emergency of any kind and cannot reach Dr. Firnberg immediately by phone, simply go to the nearest emergency room.  Dr. Firnberg recommends that you go to the nearest large, regional teaching hospital, if possible — in Orange County, CA, this would be UCI Med Center in Garden Grove — since such facilities will have psychiatric staff on-call 24 hours per day.

4.  Keep a note pad at hand through your day and jot down various questions or problems which may come to mind, and bring this notepad in with you to each clinic visit.  This will help to alleviate the problem which some patients have of arriving to their sessions and “blanking out” about the questions they have had in the time leading up to their session.  This helps you maximize your time in session.

5.  Prior to each clinic visit, review the number of refills which you have remaining for each of your medications, and report to Dr. Firnberg if the remaining refills are getting low for any particular medications.  That way he can write out refills for these medications while in session, so that you won’t have to call the pharmacy or the doctor later to request refills.

6.  Remember that the best evidence indicates that medication treatment alone (pharmacotherapy) is not as effective in the long-run as when it is combined with regular psychotherapy (‘talk therapy’).  Therefore, try to add some kind of regular counseling to your medication treatment, consistent with any budget limitations you may have, as a long-term strategy to increase your chances of eventually being able to phase off psychiatric  medications.  Regular psychotherapy improves outcomes and improves the chances for a more full recovery.