The advent of safer psychopharmacological agents with less troublesome side effects, along with increasing knowledge of the broad array of syndromes treatable with medication, have led to a vast expansion in treatment options available to the psychiatrist. Studies and clinical experience demonstrate that employing psychotropic medication in combination with psychoanalysis or psychodynamic psych...

BACKGROUND There is evidence that the use of any psychotropic and the concomitant use of two or more benzodiazepines are related to an increased risk of fractures in old age. However, also controversial results exist. The aim was to describe associations between the use of a psychotropic drug, or the concomitant use of two or more of these drugs and the risk of fractures in a population aged 65...

Psychiatric drug treatment is characterized by large interindividual differences in drug response and dosage requirements. For example, only half of the patients will respond to antidepressant treatment and only one-third of patients experience a full remission of symptoms [1]. In terms of antipsychotic medication, approximately 20% to 35% of people affected by schizophrenia, under optimal anti...

TDM of psychotropic drugs is widely used, but there is little consensus regarding its optimal use in the clinical context. This prompted a multidisciplinary group comprised of clinical biochemists, clinical pharmacologists, and psychiatrists of the AGNP (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Neuropsychopharmakologie und Pharmakopsychiatrie) to provide a consensus guideline. This will allow clinical psychiatr...

Pharmacoepidemiological studies exploring utilisation of psychotropic medications in real-life conditions are required to identify extension of indications, since the risk of gap between the theoretical target population and the population actually treated is especially marked for this class of drugs. A large proportion of subjects from the general population are exposed to psychotropic medicat...

The annual prevalence of psychotropic medication use exceeds 10 percent in Europe and the United States, the prevalence being higher among the divorced than the married. We analysed changes in the three-month prevalence of psychotropic medication use (psycholeptics and psychoanaleptics excluding medication for dementia) by proximity to divorce, sex, medication type and socio-demographic charact...

This study aims to examine trends in outpatient psychotropic drug use among people with intellectual disabilities in Taiwan. The NHI outpatient medication records between January 1, 1997 and December 31, 2007 for people with intellectual disabilities were analyzed to observe the percent change, prevalence and prescription trends in psychotropic drugs. The overall prevalence of psychotropic medi...

Antipsychotic medications have been first line treatment for schizophrenia for half a century, yet few studies have assessed outpatient maintenance treatment in large populations. This article describes oral antipsychotic dosing patterns and psychotropic treatments using computerized Medicaid claims data for individuals who were diagnosed with schizophrenia and received treatment on an outpatie...

  Background: Poisoning incidents, in both children and adolescents, are known to occur in New Zealand but little is known about the agents implicated.   Methods: All the calls received over the ten years between 2000 and 2009, by the National Poison Centre in New Zealand, were retrospectively reviewed. Calls related to cases involving those less than 19 years were included. The data were analy...