Andrea Mant

Development of long term use of psychotropic drugs by general practice patients

From 1984 to 1986 a prospective study was conducted of 104 general practice patients who started treatment with a benzodiazepine or an antidepressant drug. The duration of reported use of the drugs was two months for 45% of patients, four months for 17% of patients, and six months for 15%. Type of drug, age, and level of education were found to be predictive of continuing use. General practitioners have a significant effect on their patients use of drugs and, with careful selection and review when prescribing, may help to prevent dependence on psychotropic drugs.

The path to prescription: sex differences in psychotropic drug prescribing for general practice patients.

SummaryThe excess prescribing of mood-modifying drugs to women has been observed for some time, but the explanation for the sex difference has resisted analysis. In this paper, we develop five distinct hypotheses which summarise several of the most popular explanations and subject them to empirical test using data collected independently from doctors and patients in 1301 general practice consultations. The survey was conducted in Sydney, Australia in 1976, and includes information on psychiatric morbidity, presenting complaint, diagnosis, and prescription. Cross-tabular and regression analyses suggest that higher rates of consulting by women and perhaps a higher incidence of female morbidity account for much of the prescribing differential. That is, the main sources of the sex difference in prescribing appear to lieoutside the consultation rather than arising from doctor/patient interaction. The one exception to this is that doctors tend to “underdiagnose” psychiatric disturbance in males.

Media images and medical images

The study sought to examine the image of women portrayed in drug advertisements and how that image contrasts with the portrayal of men. Special attention was given to advertisements for mood-modifying drugs since women are the majority of users of such drugs. n nContent analysis was performed on nearly 500 drug advertisements in a sample drawn from seven years of the Medical Journal of Australia and the Australian Family Physician, the two most widely distributed general medical journals in Australia. The analysis revealed significant differences between ads for mood-modifying drugs and advertisements for other categories of drugs. In advertisements for mood-modifiers, pictures were used with greater frequency and those pictures were more often of women than of men, thus reinforcing the doctors expectation that the patient requiring such a drug will be female. However, assessment of the scientific appeal of the advertisements found no significant differences by sex of patient or type of drug. Overall ads showing both women and men were highly stereotyped as to sexual and social roles, notwithstanding the professional and clinical context in which they appeared.

Trends in psychotropic drugs dispensing 1967-1977: The impact of government controls in Australia

In the seventies, the bulk of Australian prescribing outside of hospitals took place under a government subsidised scheme known as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). Using two sources of data, one from PBS dispensing only, and the other including private sales, trends in the volume of dispensing of three groups of psychotropic drugs--minor tranquillisers, antidepressants and hypnosedatives --are discussed. The effects on volume dispensed of changes in conditions of subsidy for psychotropic drugs covered by the Scheme has varied, and though the listing of a psychotropic drug for general use alters the share of the market taken by the PBS, there is little evidence that it alters the overall market for the drug.