Five-year trend of antipsychotic prescription practices in a district Hospital in Ghana: A retrospective study
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Date
2023
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Publisher
Neuropsychopharmacology Report
Abstract
Introduction: Antipsychotics are the mainstay treatment for psychotic conditions.
Their prescription, however, should come with some caution since the consequences
of their side effects can be dire for the patient receiving the prescription. Because of
inadequate experts in low-middle-income countries, non-experts are trained through
the Mental Health Gap Action Program (MHGAP) to reduce the treatment gap. This
retrospective study analyzed the trend of antipsychotic prescriptions in a district hos pital where mental health services are delivered by non-experts.
Methodology: This was a retrospective descriptive study that gathered data between
2015 and 2019 from the electronic database of the hospital. Statistical analysis was
conducted using SPSS version 20. We reported the descriptive statistics of our find ings in the form of frequencies and percentages.
Results: There was a year-on-year increase in antipsychotic prescriptions over the
study period. Starting with 48.1% in 2015 to 56.4% in 2019. The main condition for
which antipsychotics were prescribed was psychosis (58.6%), followed by substance
use disorder (SUD) (26%). Patients with age ≥ 50 received the most prescription of an tipsychotics. Starting from 2015, there was a high percentage of typical antipsychotic
prescriptions (90.14%) with atypical antipsychotics being 9.86% and by 2019 atypical
antipsychotic prescriptions had shot up to 74.8%. Polypharmacy prescription rate was
8.1% over the study period.
Conclusion: Antipsychotics are essential in the treatment of psychosis and other men tal health conditions. Prescribers need to know more about these drugs to prescribe
them appropriately and to minimize the likelihood of side effects among patients who
use these drugs.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
antipsychotics, atypical, EPSE, meso-cortica