More than Half of Patients with Schizophrenia Are Receiving Polypharmacy and Co-Prescription of Anxiolytics in Pakistan —Findings from Research on Asian Prescription Pattern in 2016

Abstract

Objective: Little is known about the prescription pattern of psychotropic drugs for patients with schizophrenia in Pakistan. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the characteristic features of psychotropic drug prescriptions for patients with schizophrenia in Pakistan. Methods: Three centers in Pakistan participated in a large scale collaborative study known as Research on Asian Prescription Pattern (REAP). The 2016 REAP survey included centers from 15 countries in Asia and used a unified research protocol. The design of the study was quantitative and of descriptive epidemiology. Analysis was made on the data collected from three centers i.e., Lahore, Karachi and IslaHow to cite this paper: Malik, M., Ghani, U., Awais, N., Munir, N., Javed, A., Hamirani, M. The main findings of the study were that a majority of the patients were prescribed antipsychotic polypharmacy drugs in Pakistan. Insufficient training on the use of psychotropic drugs and a lack of treatment guideline are considered to be the major contributing factors. Further education and training on the proper use of psychotropic drugs are recommended to psychiatrists in Pakistan. The guidelines on pharmacotherapy for patients with schizophrenia should also be developed and promoted in Pakistan.

Psychotropic drugs consumption during 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns: Evidence of a surprising resilience of the drugs delivery system in France

“…Specialized consultations, such as psychiatry, were very limited during the first "grand national lockdown". This result can be interpreted as a tendency of psychiatrists (or hospital physicians) to co-prescribe psychotropic drugs ( Beuscart et al, 2017 ; Malik et al, 2018 ; Maric et al, 2017 ) either because they are comfortable with the handling of these treatments, or because they see clinically more severe patients, or patients with comorbidities, in failure of management by the referring physicians.…”