Pharmacoepidemiological assessment of patients diagnosed with psychotic disorder in Turkey for 2019

Psychotic disorders are a group of diseases that can cause changes in individuals' perception of reality, emotional responses, cognitive functions, thinking skills and behaviors. Treatment is needed in the early stages of the disease to minimize this decline in patients' quality of life. The most important treatment in psychotic disorders is the use of antipsychotic medication. Antipsychotic drug treatment given in the treatment of psychotic disorder varies depending on the symptoms of the patients, the response of the symptoms to the treatment and the preference of the physician. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the trends in antipsychotic use in psychotic disorder in Turkey and the factors affecting this. Using the Prescription Information System data, antipsychotic drugs, lithium, anxiolytic drugs, hypnotic and sedative drugs prescribed by family physicians to patients with psychotic disorders in the age group 18 and over in 2019 were evaluated. The most commonly prescribed antipsychotic agents in all diagnostic groups are quetiapine, risperidone and olanzapine. When these drugs were examined by age groups, quetiapine, risperidone and olanzapine were preferred frequently in young patients, while the frequency of quetiapine preference increases in elderly patients. When the number of prescriptions containing N05 group drugs prescribed to the patients diagnosed with psychotic disorder is examined according to the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, the number of prescriptions per person varies between regions. This situation may be related to the number of applications to health institutions per person, the number of specialists per person, the number of family physicians per person and the number of people with social security. When antipsychotics are evaluated in terms of polypharmacy in the prescriptions of patients diagnosed with psychotic disorders, the most preferred diagnosis for combined therapy is schizophrenia. The percentage of prescription in which two or more drugs are preferred in schizophrenia is 27.77%. Our study has been a comprehensive study evaluating the drugs prescribed to patients diagnosed with psychotic disorder in Turkey and will be a guide for many studies.