OBJECTIVES To examine the use of psychotropic drugs in 24 rural and urban long-term care (LTC) facilities, and compare the effect of an education intervention for LTC staff and family members on the use of psychotropic drugs in intervention versus control facilities. METHODS Interrupted time series with a non-equivalent no-treatment control group time series. Data on drug use were collected i...

BACKGROUND Psychiatric disorders are equally common during pregnancy as among non-pregnant women, and many of these conditions are treated with psychotropic medicines. Relatively little is known about patterns of use of many these agents during pregnancy, and specifically of how rates may have shifted during the last decade. We aimed to quantify the rate of pregnancy related exposures to catego...

Risperidone and ziprasidone are commonly used as first line drugs for the treatment of psychotic disorders and overdose with these agents is increasingly being reported. Relatively few of these reports have involved co-ingestion of multiple psychotropic agents. We report a case of overdose with risperidone, ziprasidone, valproate, trihexyphenidyl and clonazepam in a 25 years female, who recover...

CONTEXT Studies have revealed that youth in foster care covered by Medicaid insurance receive psychotropic medication at a rate > 3 times that of Medicaid-insured youth who qualify by low family income. Systematic data on patterns of medication treatment, particularly concomitant drugs, for youth in foster care are limited. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this work was to describe and quantify patte...

Objective(s) Psychotropic medications produce their effects, in part, through increasing neurotrophin levels in the brain. Since studies concerning nerve growth factor (NGF) analysis have been limited in scope, in the current experiments we investigated the effects of diverse psychotropic agents on NGF protein levels in various brain regions of rat. Materials and Methods Male Wistar rats rec...

BACKGROUND To determine whether psychotropic cessation in patients with drug-induced blepharospasm improves motor symptoms. METHODS In patients with drug-induced blepharospasm, we withdrew part or all of their psychotropic medication and assessed motor symptoms using the Jankovic rating scale (0 = none, 1 = noticeable, 2 = mild, 3 = moderate, 4 = severe) at first presentation and after cessat...

background and objectives: the expanding field of psychopharmacology is constantly seeking new and improved drugs to treat psychiatric disorders. although psychotropic drugs have had a remarkable impact in psychiatry, their utilization, effectiveness, and side effects in the in clinical practice need continuous study. the present study was thus designed to analyze the pattern of psychotropic dr...

OBJECTIVE The authors reviewed the risks and benefits regarding the use of psychiatric medications during breast-feeding as they relate to the health and well-being of mothers and their infants. Strategies are discussed to limit infant exposure to a medication while effectively treating the nursing mother. METHOD A MEDLINE search of the literature since 1955 was conducted to determine the use...