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The Clinician’s Role in Helping Patients to Take Antidepressants as Prescribed

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Book cover Current Themes in Psychiatry in Theory and Practice

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Abstract

Antidepressants are the most commonly prescribed medicine, accounting for over 100 million prescriptions per year in the United States of America (USA) alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In accordance with national recommendations, they are often prescribed for periods of 6 or 12 months. Yet the advice given by prescribers, and the difficulties patients face taking medication for extended periods, have been poorly studied.1–3 Most imagine it is relatively simple to follow a 5-day antibiotic course, but in reality only two-thirds manage to do so successfully.4 Ask patients to follow a 7-day course, with antibiotics four times a day, and ideal concordance is achieved by only 39%.5 As depression is increasingly thought of as a chronic illness, it is useful to compare medication habits with other long-term conditions.6 Barber and colleagues (2004) found that only 16% of patients taking medication for stroke, coronary heart disease, asthma, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis were adherent, problem free and in receipt of sufficient information when examined at 10 days.7

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Authors
  1. Alex J. Mitchell
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. St George’s Hospital, London, UK

    Niruj Agrawal

  2. St Helier Hospital, Carshalton, UK

    Jim Bolton

  3. Keats House, London, UK

    Raghunandan Gaind

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© 2012 Alex J. Mitchell

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Mitchell, A.J. (2012). The Clinician’s Role in Helping Patients to Take Antidepressants as Prescribed. In: Agrawal, N., Bolton, J., Gaind, R. (eds) Current Themes in Psychiatry in Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230317062_12

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