Information, compliance and side-effects: a study of patients on antidepressant medication

A study was carried out to elucidate whether the improved compliance associated with the provision of verbal and written information about a prescribed drug is due to the specific information or to a non-specific attention-placebo effect. 120 depressed outpatients were prescribed dothiepin and randomly allocated to one of three groups: Group A were given verbal and written information about side-effects; Group B were given verbal and written information about beneficial effects; Group C were told only that the drug was being given to treat their depression and received no written information. Compliance with medication was assessed at 3 weeks and 6 weeks by interrogation and by pill count. At the same time, side-effects were enquired for and their occurrence or non-occurrence noted. No significant differences were found between the groups in the rates of compliance at either 3 weeks or 6 weeks. When Groups A and B were combined to give a total 'information' group and compared with Group C--the 'no-information' group--the rate of compliance at 3 weeks was significantly higher (P less than 0.05) in the 'information' group. No significant differences were found between the groups in the rates of reported side-effects at either 3 weeks or 6 weeks. When Groups A and C were combined and compared with Group B (information about beneficial effects), side-effects were found to be reported significantly less frequently (P less than 0.05) in the latter at 6 weeks. Of 175 compliance estimates, 97.7% gave concordant results for estimation by interrogation and by pill count.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)