Patterns of Psychiatric Medication Prescriptions for Veterans in Treatment Courts and Other Specialty Courts

Psychiatric medications can serve as important tools for addressing behavioral health issues among criminal justice-involved (CJI) veterans. This study used national data on 12,790 CJI veterans in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Justice Outreach program from 2019 to 2020 to compare patterns of psychiatric medication prescriptions among veterans who entered a veterans treatment court (n = 6975), another specialty court (SC; n = 414), or no-SC (n = 5401). Different classes of medications were examined, including antidepressants, stimulants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, and medications for substance use disorders. The results showed that 60.2% of the total sample was prescribed a psychiatric medication within 1 year of entering the Veterans Justice Outreach program. There was no significant difference in overall psychiatric prescribing among veterans treatment court, other SC, and no-SC groups, but there were a few differences in certain classes of psychiatric medications. Moreover, about 7.8% of veterans who were in the no-SC group and were prescribed psychiatric medications did not have a psychiatric diagnosis. Veterans who were younger, non-Hispanic white, married, with a VA service-connected disability rating, had a diagnosis of mental and/or substance use disorder, and used more VA health care services were more likely to have been prescribed psychiatric medication. Together, these findings illustrate the essential role of psychiatric medications in courts and programs that serve CJI veterans, as well as the important link between VA service engagement and psychiatric prescriptions.