The psychiatrists themselves don't need to do both, as doctors practicing EBM they are interested in proven results. The decision to recommend a treatment (and

The psychiatrists themselves don't need to do both, as doctors practicing EBM they are interested in proven results. The decision to recommend a treatment (and to accept it) is based on the pros and cons only. What people really care about is side effects. That's one of the reasons modern pharmas are so fixated in testing old drugs for new disorders (the other reason is they might be able to get a new patent case in point when Eli Lilly made pink fluoxetine for girls with a new indication for PMS [0]). Similarly, the best way to identify side effects is by looking at the molecule and guessing (static analysis), testing with cells, animals or other non-human biological systems (I guess this is alpha testing as we rarely think of the testers as human...), and then in human studies (early access). Even then we roll out incrementally (phase 2), before widely testing in phase 3 and collecting feedback. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2000/07/06/companies/lilly/ https://money.cnn.com/2000/07/06/companies/lilly/