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. 1980 May;26:725–727.

Drug Compliance and the Psychiatric Patient

Allan Seltzer, Brian F Hoffman
PMCID: PMC2383345  PMID: 21293576

Abstract

Non-compliance is one of the commonest causes of therapeutic failure in both medicine and psychiatry. With psychiatric patients the factors contributing to non-compliance are related to: illness variables (schizophrenia, mania, paranoia, chronicity), patient variables (inappropriate health beliefs, need to rebel against authority, a wish to remain sick, defective memory), medication variables (inefficient and ineffective regimens, side effects) and patient-therapist variables (degree of supervision, trust and information).

Treatment must consist of constant vigilance, health teaching—both verbal and written—enlisting the help of family and community to provide supervision, simplification of drug regimens, frequent examination and vigorous treatment of side effects, and improving the patient-therapist interaction.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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