Large Proportions of Patients Who Are Prescribed Antipsychotics in the U.K. Do Not Have Severe Mental Illnesses

Antipsychotic drugs are used to treat patients with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, other psychoses, and bipolar affective disorder. However, evidence suggests that these drugs are prescribed frequently for patients with anxiety, dementia, and sleep disorders. In this study, U.K. investigators used a primary care database to determine the indications for which antipsychotics were prescribed in 48,000 patients.

Fourteen thousand patients were prescribed first-generation antipsychotics (haloperidol, chlorpromazine, trifluoperazine), 28,000 were prescribed second-generation antipsychotics (olanzapine, quetiapine, risperidone), and 6,000 received prescriptions for both classes of drugs. Antipsychotic prescribing rates were higher…