A Study of the Use of Antidepressant Medication in General Practice

The British Journal of PsychiatryPublished 1 August 1974

D. A. W. Johnson

DOI10.1192/bjp.125.2.186

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Citations118

SJR quartileQ1

SJR score2.47

SNIP2.17

TL;DR

The present author surveyed the prescribing habits of general practitioners in the treatment of depression in the belief that it is necessary to have this information in order to evaluate the need for education in this clinical expertise, and to act as a comparison for other surveys which will undoubtedly be carried out in the future to test the effectiveness of the current expansion of undergraduate teaching in psychiatry.

Abstract

Several surveys (Carstairs and Bruhn, 1962; Shepherd et al ., 1966; and Johnson, 1973a) have demonstrated that the treatment of psychiatric disorders in general practice consists principally of prescribing drugs, with relatively little use of social agencies and psychotherapy. Although Shepherd et al . (1966) comment that the treatment is often haphazard and inadequate, the published surveys of general practice give little specific information about the prescribing habits of doctors. The present author surveyed the prescribing habits of general practitioners in the treatment of depression in the belief that it is necessary to have this information in order to evaluate the need for education in this clinical expertise, and also to act as a comparison for other surveys which will undoubtedly be carried out in the future to test the effectiveness of the current expansion of undergraduate teaching in psychiatry.

Keywords

PsychologyHealth ProfessionsArts and Humanities

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The distribution of 93 consecutive cases of depressive illness in a Surrey general practice was found to be non-random, while married women were at risk, while men and unmarried women were largely spared.

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An analysis of the reasons for patients discontinuing LAP identified several causes: patient-refusal, side-effects, failure of administration of the regime, and patients losing contact with the medical services by moving to other districts.

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43 Citations1974D. A. W. Johnson, B. B. Heather

Despite the popularity of the Beck Depression Inventory, only Salkind (i@6g) has attempted to validate this instrument for a general practice population and Little and McPhail (i@@@) have considered this aspect of use.

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25 Citations1973D. A. W. Johnson

The present study attempts to answer the following questions about patients referred to the psychiatric outpatient department of a provincial teaching hospital.