Psychiatry’s Growing Practice of Multiple Prescriptions: 60% of patients drugged were given multiple prescriptions

About 60% of patients with psychiatrist office visits leading to a drug prescription received at least two medications in 2005-2006, according to government survey data. That was up from about 43% in 1996-1997. “These trends put patients at increased risk of drug-drug interactions with uncertain gains for quality of care and clinical outcomes,” the researchers stated.

John Gever
MedPage Today
January 4, 2010

Psychiatrists who prescribe drugs for their patients today usually give more than one at a time, often with little scientific basis, researchers said.

About 60% of patients with psychiatrist office visits leading to a drug prescription received at least two medications in 2005-2006, according to government survey data analyzed by Ramin Mojtabai, MD, PhD, MPH, of Johns Hopkins University, and Mark Olfson, MD, MPH, of Columbia University.

That was up from about 43% in 1996-1997 (P<0.001), the researchers reported in the January Archives of General Psychiatry.

They also found that 33% of prescription-associated visits led to three or more medications in the latter period, compared with 17% nine years earlier (P<0.001).

These multiple combinations sometimes involved drugs within the same class — two or more antidepressants for depressed patients, for example — but more often drugs of different classes.

Gaining in popularity during the study period were combinations of antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, with an adjusted odds ratio of 1.96 (P<0.001) for each year during the study period.

Read entire article: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/GeneralPsychiatry/17785

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