[Use of psychoactive drugs and family dysfunction]

To find out the relationship between the use of psychoactive drugs in women and the results of the APGAR and stressful life events (SLE) questionnaires.

Cross-sectional, descriptive study.

General Fanjul Health Centre in Area 7 of the Community of Madrid.

All the women between 25-65 years who were seen in Primary Care clinics in one week in March, 2005.

Validated surveys validated of family dysfunction (Apgar) and stressful life events (additive scale of evaluation of social readjustment) were carried on women between 25-65 years who took psychoactive drugs.

Of the 625 women who were seen in the clinics, 121 (19.36%), with a mean age of 46.8+/-12.7 years, were interviewed. Of these, 90% were Spanish, 55.4% were married, 67% had children, 3.3% had not received schooling, 75.2% had a primary school education, 21.5% with university studies, and 57.9% work outside the home. Antidepressants were used by 24% of the women, with 30.6% taking benzodiazepines. The use of benzodiazepines increases with the age (p<0.001). On having look at the relationship between the use of benzodiazepines or antidepressants and the existence of major family dysfunction or major stressful life events (SLE) we verify that statistically significant differences do not exist.

Although it was intuitively possible to believe that SLE and family dysfunction lead to a higher use of psychoactive drugs, we could not find a statistically significant relationship. We have shown that there is a higher use of benzodiazepines in older women.