Laboratory medical tests have different applications in the field of psychiatry. Some lab tests are done for psychiatric inpatients and outpatients as a routine basic assessment. These tests may be important for diagnosing or ruling out some possible organic causes of psychiatric symptoms and/or co morbidities, or as comparative basic data for further evaluation of some important psychotropic medications effects and/or side effects. Some other important areas of lab tests applications are monitoring serum levels of some psychotropic drugs for evaluation of patient’s compliance/noncompliance to drug, for establishing and maintaining effective therapeutic blood levels of medications, for assessment of the etiology of non-responsiveness to pharmacotherapy as well as several other clinical implications.

Through an extensive and comprehensive literature review in this non-systematic review study, authors have classified the application of laboratory tests in the psychiatry practice from several aspects.

Laboratory tests were classified regarding different aspects like the frequency of prescription by psychiatrists, cost-effectiveness of some routine assessments, legal obligation and claims issues, follow up considerations, psychotropic drugs false/real interactions with some laboratory tests and some false positive /negative laboratory results with great importance in the psychiatry practice as well as several other issues.

Both psychiatrists and laboratory practitioners need to have some basic information about each other’s field of practice, concerns and needs. This review presents a more clear sense of the interactions and necessary co-operations between psychiatrists and medical laboratory professionals.