Prescribing Patterns of Antipsychotics in Psychiatry Outpatient Department in Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital: A Descriptive Observational Study

Drug utilization study is one of the fundamental watchtowers of promoting rational use of medicine for the treatment of various diseases. Often drugs are not used keeping in mind their safety and efficacy. To study the drug utilization pattern of psychotropic drugs in psychiatric outpatient department of Government General Hospital, Kakinada. A  Descriptive observational study was carried out in psychiatric outpatient department for duration of 3months.patients of either sex and ages in between 15-80years suffering from a psychiatric illness and started on atleast one psychotropic drug were selected. Patients below 15years age, pregnant and lactating women, patients who are not willing to co-operate, patients with intellectual disability were excluded from the study. 202 patients were enrolled for 3months study. The most affected gender was females (59.4%).commonly affected age group was between 26-35 years(30.6%).the average number of drugs per encounter for males is 3.158 and for females is 3.291.the percentage of drugs supplied form hospital pharmacy and percentage of drugs prescribed by generic names was 95.4%.all the drugs were prescribed from National Essential List Of Medicines (100%). Schizophrenia was the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorders followed by mood disorders. Antipsychotics (35.7%) are most commonly prescribed class of drugs followed by Benzodiazepines (21.2%), Olanzapine (19.2%) was most commonly prescribed antipsychotic drug. All the psychotropic drugs were prescribed from National Essential List Of Medicines. Atypical antipsychotics were prescribed more often than typical antipsychotics Owing to their fewer incidences of extra pyramidal side effects. Among atypical antipsychotics olanzapine was commonly prescribed.