Attitudes of Psychiatrists Toward Antipsychotic Depot Medication

Attitudes towards long-acting depot antipsychotics: A survey of patients, relatives and psychiatrists

“…Altogether, 67% of all patients in our sample did not receive information about depot antipsychotics by their psychiatrist. This result is consistent with previous findings (Heres et al, 2006) and might indicate a major shortcoming in information practices of psychiatrists. It could also reflect that these patients were informed but did not conceive the information or the psychiatrist thought that he provided the information but did not.…”

“…We could confirm a previous finding by Heres et al (2006) that psychiatrists would use depot antipsychotics more often if there were more preparations available in depot form and if the patients would agree on changing the method of application. The latter might indicate that we face a vicious circle in the sense that psychiatrists anticipate a negative attitude of patients towards depot injections that deters them from providing comprehensive information about this formulation that facilitates or maintains patient's negative attitudes towards depot antipsychotics.…”

“…These are often regarded as old fashioned and stigmatising and are considered to cause more side effects and thus also cause more legal problems than when oral medication is prescribed (Patel et al, 2003;Patel and David, 2005). Furthermore, second-generation long-acting injectable drugs are considered to be associated with high treatment costs (Heres et al, 2006). Studies in which the patient's satisfaction with a method of administering drugs is taken into account show that patients have a positive attitude towards depot medication (Pereira and Pinto, 1997;Walburn et al, 2001;Svedberg et al, 2003).…”

Second Generation Long-acting Injectable Antipsychotics as a First-line Treatment of First Episode Schizophrenia:“Lights”and“Shadows”

“…However, despite the effectiveness of LAIs in the treatment of schizophrenia, psychiatrists' attitude toward these agents is sometimes negative [20,21]. In fact, although LAIs are widely recognized to be adherence-enhancing and strongly preventive of relapse, a great number of psychiatrists seemed to avoid prescribing depot antipsychotics especially for patients with FES [22].…”

1151 – Clinicians’ attitudes toward the use of long-acting injectable antipsychotics

“…However, the use of long-acting injectable (LAI) formulations varies between countries. The prescription rates are higher in France (23.5%;Fourrier et al, 2000) and in the United Kingdom (29%; Barnes et al, 2009) compared with other European countries and with Canada (6.3%; Williams et al, 2006) or the United States (17.6%; West et al, 2008).This discrepancy between countries can be considered to derive from the health care system and from the different attitudes displayed by psychiatrists.Perceived coercion or presumed risks for lower tolerance of depot forms have been identified as factors responsible for this low use (Heres et al, 2006; Patel and David, 2011). More generally, negative attitudes from practitioners toward these forms have been shown to account for part of the low prescription rates of depot antipsychotics (Hamann et al, 2010;Heres et al, 2006Heres et al, , 2008Heres et al, , 2011.…”