Drug Utilisation Study of psychotropic Drugs in a Psychiatric Outpatient Department in a Tertiary Care Hospital: A Covid-19 perspective
Author(s): Akshaya Narasimman*, Akshay C Dahiwele
Abstract
Drug utilization study is an effort to generate data based on statistics and records of prescriptions, drug therapy regimens and widespread use of prescribed drugs which gives an idea of its potential utilization, cost effectiveness and the optimum dosage of the drugs. Improvements based on rationale drug prescribing patterns, its distribution, the marketing strategies for maximum consumption and cost of drug treatment in a hospital of tertiary care may help in enhancing the drug-related policies and consequently an efficient health-care provision to the people. This study deals with the retrospective data generation from the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, which not only was a biological catastrophe but mental and emotional disbalances among the masses due to companionship and financial losses. Psychotropic polypharmacy is a serious issue in psychiatric treatment, and it can lead to harmful medication effects in patients. The availability of these medications at a tertiary care hospital at the required time to treat the patients and the correct dosage amount for the utilization of the optimum potency and thus getting the best results is also a by-product of this drug utilization study. A small-scale evidence-based pharmacoepidemiologic study of the drug utilization of prescribed daily dose of psychotropic drugs in a hospital of tertiary care, its safe dosage patterns may aid in the better psychiatric care of people. Anxiety problems prompted more people to seek assistance than mood disorders. The COVID-19 effects on mental health are as expected, highlighting the need of effective and accessible treatments. Increased diagnoses across the board in every anxiety disorder category which are most common and it's uncertain if post-COVID-19 anxiety will take on a profile similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, rates of the diagnoses of insomnia were found to be much higher, which is consistent with expectations that COVID-19 infection may cause circadian disruptions. As a result, the disease pattern was wide and non-uniform.