[General practitioners and internists prescribe psychopharmaceutic drugs]

An epidemiological study using data from a local German health insurance fund on the psychotropic drug prescription of physicians and the drug utilisation of their patients is presented. Taking a sample of 280 out-patients, descriptive methods are presented (defined daily dose (DDD), prescribed daily dose (PDD), active-agent-oriented classification of drugs, therapy-oriented classification of diagnoses). The following questions are answered by this study: Which patients with which indication received which dosage of which psychotropic drug for how long from which physicians? The patient-based structure of the data, taking into account the prescriptions of all physicians allows the course of therapies and the study of overall psychotropic medication. Prevalences estimates concerning the patients are also possible. Our results are compared with those of similar pharmaco-epidemiological studies; the difference in prevalence estimates, as well as advantages and possible disadvantages arising from the use of such secondary data base, are discussed.