Long-term Psychotropic Drug Prescribing for General Practice Patients

摘要

Although 11.3of patients of an academic general practice unit were prescribed one of the four commonest psychotropic drugs in 1978, only 1.6received six or more prescriptions. During the following three years further prescriptions for the same drug were issued in 61of the patient years for which information was available. Most of the frequent recipients were elderly women. Further research is needed into the natural history of conditions for which psychotropic drugs are prescribed in general practice.