Recent Trends in Prescribing Psychotropic Drugs at a Psychiatric University Hospital (1981-84)

Abstract

Analysis of the prescribing of psychotropic drugs in the psychiatric hospital of the Free University of Berlin revealed a slight decrease in the mean number of prescriptions to our patients over recent years. As a response to intensified psychopharmacological pretreatment the proportion of patients who had initially been treated drug-free (up to the 10th day after admission) rose steadily every year. The use of neuroleptics increased significantly, mainly due to increased prescriptions of this group of compounds to endogenous depressives. The use of benzodiazepines, however, decreased in all groups of patients. Simultaneous use of neuroleptics was a clear leader in the category of drug combinations. Low-potent neuroleptics (i.e. perazine, clozapine), clomipramine, and the MAO-inhibitor tranylcypromine were preferred increasingly in recent years; reduced prescription rates were found for haloperidol, clomethiazol, and metamizol. These changes may be related to an ongoing process of reevaluating benefits and risks of available treatments. The systematic updating of prescribing patterns is an essential tool for quality control of psychiatric pharmacotherapy.

Psychotropic drug prescriptions in hospitalized elderly psychiatric patients: comparison with adult psychiatric patients

“…We found a mean number of 2.7 ± 1.3 drugs for adult patients and 2.4 ± 1.3 drugs for elderly patients. The prescription frequencies in our survey were similar to those of many other studies, which show that, habitually, an average of two or three psychotropic drugs are prescribed for psychiatric patients, according to data collected from both cross‐sectional and longitudinal surveys 22–27 …”

Antipsychotic Polypharmacy: A Survey of Discharge Prescriptions from a Tertiary Care Psychiatric Institution

“…This Swiss study was de signed with a meth odo logi cal ap proach simi lar to that of Schmidt and oth ers, who ob served a mean value of 2.6 psy cho tropic medi ca tions daily per pa tient dur ing a 2-year pe riod (April 1, 1979, to March 31, 1981) at a psy chi at ric uni ver sity hos pi tal in Ber lin (17). Follow-up data on the lat ter study re ported mean val ues of 3.25 in 1981 and 3.0 in 1984 (18). The sig nificantly greater mean number of dis charge medi ca tions seen in our po lyphar macy group can not be ex plained solely by the ad di tion of the sec ond an tipsy chotic but rather by the expected greater use of an ti cho liner gic agents: 55.6% of the patients leav ing hos pi tal on an an tipsy chotic po lyphar macy regi men re ceived a pre scrip tion for an an ti cho liner gic agent, com pared with 36.8% dis charged on an tipsy chotic monother apy (P < 0.01).…”

Cytochrome P-450 enzymes and FMO3 contribute to the disposition of the antipsychotic drug perazine in vitro

“…Perazine (PER) is a first generation antipsychotic drug of intermediate potency that is widely used in Germany (Pietzcker et al 1981;Schmidt et al 1988). Its chemical structure is closely related to other phenothiazine derivatives, such as trifluperazine, perphenazine and fluphenazine.…”