정신과 외래통원환자의 투약 방법에 대한 태도

The Attitude toward Drug Administration Schedule in the Psychiatric Outpatents

Many studies has been reported about drug def ault of psychiatric patients. However few reports about the area have been issued in Korea. The author intended to survey the present status of clinical practice of dosage schedule among the psychiatrists and that of drug default of psychiatric outpatients. Entered into the study were 274 neurotic and 184 psychotic outpatients of 10 neuropsychiatric outpa tient clinics who received drug therapy for 8weeks or longer at the clinics, The survey was performed by questionnaire method. The results are summarized as follow； 1. A majority of the prescriptions for psychotics (65. 8%) were once or twice a day administration, while 65.1% of them for neurotics were 3 to 4times daily schedule. 2. Three quarters of the psychotics, a significantly higher rate compared to 56. 9% of the neurotics, were compliant to the doctors * administration schedule. 3. Among the neurotics, 72. 9% of the drug defaulters and 19. 6% of the compliant patients were dissatisfied with their frequent daily administration schedules. 4. Frequently presented reasons of unplanned selftermination of medication among neurotics and the psychotics were “remission of the illness”, and “fear of being addicted to drug”. 5. While 34.3% of the neurotics receive once or twice daily schedule, 52. 9% of the neurotics wanted the same schedule. From these results, the author would like to call attention of the psychiatrists to be aware of the patients’ reasons of drug self-termination and to recommend simpler drug administration schedules especially for the neurotic patients to enhance their drug compliance.