One in four people will experience a mental health condition during their lifetime, and medicines are commonly prescribed to treat people. The number of prescriptions rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, with annual antidepressant spending in the NHS increasing by ￡ 140m1,2. Antipsychotic prescribing has steadily increased over the past decade too 3. Healthcare professionals working in mental health pharmacy regularly see the challenges relating to these medicines. A major challenge in psychiatry is nonadherence. Adherence to mental health medicines could be as low as 4050, despite it being an important factor in improving patient outcomes 4. Alongside patient preference and clinical parameters, a trialanderror approach to prescribing psychiatry medicines is often used, which can mean frequent medication switches from those that do not yield the required therapeutic response or lead to adverse drug reactions (ADRs). The high prevalence of ADRs and lack of therapeutic response from psychiatric medicines are both factors driving poor adherence 5,6.
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