Drug Prescription Pattern of Psychotropic Drugs Used for the Management of Schizophrenia in a Tertiary Care Speciality Hospital in South Kerala

Abstract

An individual affected by psychotic illness is usually a burden to both the society as well as their family in terms of non-productivity. The WHO recognized the significance of mental health and defined it as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being”.A psychiatric or psychotropic medication refers to a psychoactive substance administered to exert an effect on the chemical makeup of the brain and nervous system. A hospital based cross sectional observational study was undertaken in the Mental Health Centre, Trivandrum. All psychiatric drugs prescribed was collected with the help of data collection form and anaysed with Excel and SPSS. The study data indicated that highest percentage of drugs used was coming under the classification antipsychotice agents (63.25%), followed by antianxietic agents (21.25%), antiepileptic agents (9.34%), antimania agents (3.07%) and antidepressants (3.07%). Highly prescribed antipsychotic agent was Risperidone (12.93%) followed by haloperidol (11.40%), Promethazine (10.50%).This study was conducted in a govt hospital, so all medicine was free of cost. Due to the poor financial quality of life of psychiatric patients , prescribers were forced to write the hospital avilable medicine to the patients. The main limitation of this study was, it is only a single centered sudy so the result was very limited. So multicentered study is recommended to get a better result to find out the prescribing pattern and pattern of schizophrenia in kerala.