Pages: 17-25

Abstract

The evidence of psychotropic drug safety and efficacy is scant and widely debated. Yet, the prescription prevalence and incidence are increasing. A cross-sectional health survey was carried out with a self-designed standard questionnaire by directly interviewing the 615 patients from May, 2015 to January, 2016 in Rajshahi division. This study group comprised of 63.58% male and 36.42% female and most of the patients are young to middle aged with 15-24 years 35.93%, 25-34 years 31.38%, 35-44 years 13.01% and 45-54 years 11.22%. The main causes of taking psychotropic drug is anxiety/tension 25.37%, depression 18.21%, sleeping disorder 10.56% and pain 10.24%. It is found in this study, 35.77% of the patients are taking this type of drug without the concern of physician and 13% patients are going to quack doctor. Only 49.67% cases of the doctors are showing interest on the past history of patients and in 56.49% cases, physicians are providing sufficient information about dose and dosage interval and in 46.59% cases doctors are advising the patients about the completion of doses. The majority of the patients were prescribed by anxiolytic drug (59.02%), antipsychotic drug (19.84%) and antidepressant drug (20.65%). Here, half of the patients do not have experience of side effects but others are experiencing drowsiness, headache, sedation, weakness etc. It is also found that 48.54% of patients are not getting any support from their family members to recovery from disease.