Whether Olanzapine or Risperidone? A cross sectional study to find out the most common psychotropic drug used at a tertiary care hospital of Nepal
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Abstract
Background
There are a number of Psychotropic drugs available in the market for treatment of mental disorders currently. It is interesting to know the pattern of drug utilization among the psychotropic drugs and the degree of control of the psychiatric cases with the psychotropic drugs in the actual clinical set up in a tertiary health care centre. The main objective of the study was to find out the most common drug prescribed by the psychiatrist among the psychotropic drugs.
Methods
This is a cross sectional questionnaire based observational study was carried out at Manipal Teaching Hospital. It is a tertiary care hospital situated in the western development region of Nepal.
Results
Most of the patients were in between age group 14–40 years 77.6%. Majority of the patients were Brahmin 28.1%, Chettri 24%, Dalit 22.9%. About 79.2% of the patients were unemployed. Most of the patients were Hindu 84.4% followed by Buddhists 11.5%. The group of Psychotropic drugs most commonly prescribed were Neuroleptics 42.7% followed by Anxiolytics 16.1%, Antidepressants 15.1% Antimanics 9.4% as monotherapy and two or more psychotropic drugs combined 16.7%. Olanzapine was the most common drug prescribed followed by Haloperidol and Promethazine, Risperidone, Alprazolam, Sodium valproate, Clonazepam, Fluoxetine respectively.
Conclusion
Among the use of Psychotropic drugs there is a shift of treatment to Atypical Neuroleptics from Typical Neuroleptics may be due to absence of extrapydamidal and other major adverse effects of Typical Neuroleptics. The treatment of Depression the shift to SSRI from TCA has made the treatment more safe. Sodium valproate was found to be the commonest drug prescribed for the treatment of bipolar affective disorder, recommended that there is a trend of using newer drugs rather than the conventional mood stabilizers like Lithium for bipolar affective disorder.
