Drug Utilization Evaluation of Psychotropic Drugs in the Psychiatry in-patient Department of Tertiary Care Hospital.

Objectives: To study the prescription pattern of psychotropic drugs in different psychiatric disorder. Methodology: The prospective observational study was conducted in 100 psychiatric in-patients at a tertiary care hospital in Bangalore. Study was conducted on gaining approval from the institutional human ethical committee. All patients who meet the study criteria were enrolled in to the study after taking the informed consent from the patients or their legal representatives. The demographic, clinical and medications data were documented into a specially designed case report form. All the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results and Discussion: In 100 study subjects 194 different psychotropic drugs were prescribed. Among 194 psychotropic drugs 38.14% were sedatives and hypnotics, 36.08% were antipsychotics, 18.55% were antidepressants and 7.21% were mood stabilizer. Conclusion: This study found that schizophrenia was the most common illness in psychiatric patients. Male patients were more prone to psychiatric disorders than female. Most of the study populations were non-alcoholic and non-smokers. Sedatives and hypnotics of benzodiazepine class were found to be the most commonly used drugs followed by antipsychotics, anti-depressants and mood stabilizers in the studied population. Future studies to evaluate the drug utilization evaluation of psychotropic drugs in large patient populations are much needed to promote patient safety and increase the quality of psychiatric patients.