ArticleBMC family practice2019
Attitudes and behaviour towards psychotropic drug prescribing in Swedish primary care: a questionnaire study.
Article in BMC family practice, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- Effects of collaborative care on recognition and management of common mental disorders by general practitioners: a cluster-randomised trial in Norway.BMC primary care · 2026Trial
- Stakeholder perspectives on the WHO Mental Health Gap Action Programme Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG) in humanitarian settings: a qualitative study in Lebanon and Iraq.Frontiers in health services · 2026Article
- Gender differences in psychotropic medication prescribing in a rural area of Catalonia: a community-based observational study.Frontiers in public health · 2026Observational
- Should We Just Prescribe? Ethical Considerations When Using Antidepressants and Benzodiazepines For Emotional Distress.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2025Article
- Descriptive Study of Patients Treated in a Psychosomatic Internal Medicine Declared by Japanese Family Medicine Clinic.Journal of clinical medicine research · 2023Article
- Prepandemic psychotropic drug status in Portugal: a nationwide pharmacoepidemiological profile.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Role of the prescriber in supporting patients to discontinue benzodiazepines: a qualitative study.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2021Article
- Mental-Illness-Related Stigma in Health Care in South India: Mixed-Methods Study.Indian journal of psychological medicine · 2021Article
- Different Attitudes of Patients and Psychiatrists Toward Benzodiazepine Treatment.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2021Article
- Yonder: District nursing, deprescribing, psychotropic drugs, and reasonableness.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe prescribing of psychotropic drugs, i.e. antidepressants, sedatives (anxiolytics, hypnotics), and antipsychotics is considerable and a large proportion is prescribed by general practitioners (GPs). There are concerns about dependency and medicalisation, and treatment decisions in psychiatry may appear arbitrary. Increased knowledge of GPs' opinions on the prescribing of psychotropics may lead to more rational use of these drugs. We aimed to quantify GPs' attitudes, beliefs and behaviour towards various aspects of psychotropic drug prescribing.
methodsA questionnaire was distributed to physicians in all 199 GP practices in Region Västra Götaland, Sweden. The questions concerned determinants of psychotropic drug prescribing that had been identified in a previous, qualitative study.
resultsQuestionnaires from 516 physicians (64% of whom were specialists in family medicine, 21% interns in family medicine, 15% others) at 152 GP practices (59% of which were state owned, 72% in an urban area, with a median of 7808 registered patients) were returned (estimated response rate: 48%). A majority - 62% - of GPs found it easier to start prescribing psychotropic drugs than to stop (95% confidence interval, 57%, 66%) vs. 8% (6%, 10%). Most GPs considered psychotherapy more suitable than psychotropic drugs in cases of mild psychiatric disease: 81% (77%, 84%) vs. 4% (3%, 6%). The problems treated with psychotropic drugs were considered to be mostly socioeconomic, or mostly medical, by similar proportions of physicians: 38% (34%, 42%) vs. 40% (36%, 45%). GPs were on average satisfied with their levels of antidepressant and sedative prescribing in relation to medical needs. More GPs regarded their prescribing of antipsychotics as being too low rather than too high: 33% (28%, 39%) vs. 7% (4%, 10%).
conclusionsThis study illustrates the complexities of psychiatric drug treatment in primary care and identifies potential drivers of increased prescribing of psychotropics. The manifold factors, medical and non-medical, that affect prescribing decisions may explain a sense of arbitrariness surrounding psychotropic drug treatment. This notwithstanding, GPs seem mostly content with their prescribing.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.