A Study of Psychotropic Drugs Being Prescribed to the Patients Attending the Psychiatric Outpatient Department in a Tertiary Care Hospital

BACKGROUND & PURPOSE: Drug utilization research evaluates the appropriateness of the prescriptions which is important in clinical practice. Psychotropic polypharmacy is a major problem in psychiatric practice, which can lead to the development of adverse effects of those drugs in patients. Therefore, this study was carried out to evaluate the utilization of psychotropic drugs being prescribed for various psychiatric illnesses.  MATERIALS & METHODS: A prospective, cross sectional, observational study was carried out in patients visiting the Psychiatric Out-Patient Department of B J Government Medical College and Sassoon General Hospital, Pune, INDIA; from December 2016 to May 2018. A total of 500 prescriptions were analysed using WHO Drug Use indicators and some other indicators.  RESULTS: Average number of drugs per prescription was 3.14 ± 1.18; while average number of Psychotropic drugs per prescription was 2.27 ± 0.90. 84.35% of the total drugs prescribed by Generic name. 43.89% and 41.67% of the total drugs were prescribed from National List of Essential Medicines 2015 and WHO Model List of Essential Medicines 2017, respectively. Antipsychotics was the most commonly prescribed group of Psychotropic drugs, while Olanzapine was the most commonly prescribed Psychotropic drug. 64.25% of the total drugs were prescribed from the hospital drugstore.  CONCLUSION: In the present study, drugs were prescribed rationally and judiciously. But there was a need to increase the prescription of drugs from essential drug lists. Apart from that, there was found a need to increase the availability of the commonly prescribed Psychotropic drugs in the hospital drugstore of the study institution.