Social and clinical descriptors of antipsychotic prescription

OBJECTIVE: To identify descriptors of Antipsychotic (AP) prescription, focusing on second generation antipsychotics (SGAs), polypharmacy, and long-acting injections (LAIs). METHODS: Outpatients of the Bologna-Community-Mental-Health-Centres with at least one AP prescription were selected. Patients' characteristics, service utilization, and AP prescriptions were collected from administrative databases. Prescriptions were grouped by class (SGA vs. First Generation Antipsychotics), drug combination (polypharmacy vs. monotherapy), and preparation (LAIs vs. regular administration). Multi-variate analyses were performed to identify prescription descriptors among socio-demographic and clinical variables. RESULTS: Among 6,074 patients and 41,121 AP prescriptions, SGAs were used in 70.7% of subjects, AP polypharmacy in 25.3%, and LAIs in 17.5%. SGAs were prescribed more often for young, Italian patients, with higher education, voluntary hospitalization, and high number of visits. Descriptors of AP polypharmacy were: high number of visits and hospitalization, length of treatment, non-urban residency, male gender, unemployment. Characteristics associated to LAI prescription were: long duration of treatment, high number of visits, compulsory admissions, non-Italian nationality, male gender, age > 34, low education, unmarried status. CONCLUSIONS: Besides illness severity, this study identified different socio-demographic descriptors of AP choices, raising concerns on the equity of treatments. Efforts should be directed to investigate appropriateness of AP treatments especially in social disadvantaged populations.