Psychotropics prescribed to the US elderly in the early and mid 1980s: Prescribing patterns of primary care practitioners, psychiatrists, and other physicians
✍ Scribed by Dr. David B. Larson; John S. Lyons; Ann A. Hohmann; Robert S. Beardsley; Julia Hidalgo
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1991
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 732 KB
- Volume
- 6
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0885-6230
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Primary care practitioners are significant providers of mental health services to older Americans. The most common mental health service provided by primary care practitioners to this segment of the population is psychotropic drugs. A US national data base was analyzed to compare the psychotropic prescribing patterns of primary care practitioners with psychiatrists and other office-based specialists in both the early and mid 1980s. Prescribing patterns for six different classes of psychotropics were contrasted for patients 55 years of age and older and those 15-54. Results indicate that primary care practitioners were by far the largest prescribers of psychotropics for patients 55 and over at both time periods. This pattern held for most of the individual psychotropic drug classes. In contrast to psychiatrists, primary care practitioners infrequently included a mental disorder diagnosis when they prescribed a psychotropic drug. In addition, primary care practitioners included a mental disorder diagnosis less frequently when they prescribed for the older group than when they prescribed for the younger group. These findings may be used to benefit the training of non-psychiatrist physicians in the diagnosing and treating of mental health disorders found among older adults.
KEY wows-Primary care, psychiatrists, Psychotropic medications, elderly.
Primary care practitioners play a critical role in the delivery of mental health services to the US population. About 60% of patients receiving mental health care services obtain them from primary care practitioners, including family practitioners,