#Clozapine through the lens of Instagram

Clozapine is currently an antipsychotic indicated as a 3rd-line treatment for patients with pharmacologically resistant schizophrenia. Social networks play a key role in medicine-related communication, especially amid widespread misinformation, which impacts patient compliance. This work is a preliminary study concerning information about psychotropic drugs disseminated on Instagram using clozapine as an example.

Data were selected from the social network Instagram using the keyword "#clozapine" and from the first 200 posts sorted in order of popularity. The analysis was descriptive. The final analysis was carried out on 155 posts after excluding posts that were off-topic or not written in English or French.

The sender was a user in 57% of cases, a professional in 41% and an uncategorized 2%. The main issue raised by users concerned dosage adjustment (32%, n=36), while the one raised by professionals concerned adverse effects (24%, n=26). The undesirable effect most frequently mentioned by patients was weight gain 46% (n=6) and for professionals neutropenia 44% (n=15). The proportion of patients with an unfavorable view of compliance was 10%.

Professionals are more academic and forensic, while users deal with everyday issues and quality of life. Most of the comments were not negative and did not appear to hinder compliance, and even when undesirable effects were described, they were frequently offset by the clinical improvement provided by clozapine. This study should be expanded to evaluate the quality of transmitted information and include other popular social networks like TikTok, as well as additional psychotropic drugs or therapeutic classes.