A study of the psychotropic prescriptions of people attending an addiction service in England

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the prescribed psychotropic medications taken by newly referred people with a range of substance use disorders (SUD) who attend a specialist community addiction service.Design/methodology/approach – Anonymised data on newly referred people (n=1,537) with SUD attending a specialist community addiction service for their first episode of treatment between August 2007 and July 2010 were obtained from the database of the service. Data were cleaned and the percentage of people taking prescribed psychotropic medications at their first episode of treatment was calculated.Findings – More than half (56.1 percent) of people attending the service were taking prescribed antidepressants and anxiolytics at their first episode of treatment whilst 15.2 percent of people were taking prescribed antipsychotics. Alcohol and opioids were the primary referral substances for 77.4 percent and 15.2 percent of people respectively. People referred for “other” substances (cannabis, st...