Treatment Patterns in Psychiatry: Relationships to Symptom Features and Aging

Abstract

Examination of the therapeutic regimens used in treating 89 long-term hospitalized male psychiatric patients in two groups (age 60 or older, and age 59 or younger) indicated that fewer psychotropic drugs were used in the older group (N = 45) even though both groups presented the same symptom picture,

Combination Drug Therapy for the Psychogeriatric Patient: Comparison of Dosage Levels of the Same Psychotropic Drugs, Used Singly and in Combination

“…Despite temporal, geographic and institutional sample differences, the recent data generally are consistent with our earlier observations, i.e., the practice and patterns of combining two or more psychotropic drugs appears to be sex-related (2), age-related (1), and relatively independent of diagnosis or symptoms (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10). Additional data seem to support the conclusion that there is no sound theoretic or empiric rationale for the use of most psychotropic drug combinations (11).…”