Do Psychiatric In-Patients Take their Pills?

Urine tests on in-patients are reported with the aim of determining whether the patients were taking their pills as prescribed, and the proportion of cases in which this occurs and whether it occurs more often with one type of drug than another are matters of general concern.

Abstract

In a previous study (Willcox et al. , 1965), we reported the results of urine tests on a series of psychiatric out-patients, done with the aim of determining whether the patients were taking their pills as prescribed. We now report a similar study on in-patients. It is a matter of clinical experience that some psychiatric in-patients avoid taking their pills as prescribed, for in-patients who take an overdose in a suicidal gesture often say that they 'saved up’ their prescribed pills in order to do this. There are many other reasons, such as the occurrence of unpleasant side-effects or a belief that the pills are not doing any good, which might lead in-patients to avoid swallowing their pills at medicine-time, and though we should not expect to find this happening as often in in-patients as in out-patients yet the proportion of cases in which this occurs and whether it occurs more often with one type of drug than another are matters of general concern.