The prescription of typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs to people with schizophrenia: relationships between advice,information, choice and the type of drug prescribed.

Objectives: This study examines the relationship between type of antipsychotic drug prescribed (‘typical’/’atypical’) to people with schizophrenia and information and opportunity for discussion provided by the prescribing health professional. Design: This study employs a correlational design with categorical variables obtained from questionnaire responses. Method: The data reported here comes from a large national survey (n = 2663) of mental health service users (with a range of diagnoses) and carers conducted by Mind, the Manic Depression Fellowship and the National Schizophrenia Fellowship in 2000 to collect information about experiences of the mental healthcare system. This report focuses on responses from service users with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, who indicated that they were currently taking an antipsychotic as their main medicine (n = 525), to questions about written information and verbal advice about prescribed drugs and also involvement with choice of treatment. Results: Chi-square tests with post-hoc analyses indicate an association between written information, verbal advice & involvement with choice of treatment with the prescription of ‘atypical’ antipsychotic drugs. Conclusions: Prescription of ‘atypical’ antipsychotics, which often result in less severe side-effects than ‘typical’ antipsychotic drugs, is frequently associated with service user choice and information. Whether this finding is an indicator of resource limitation or variation in mental healthcare practice should be the subject of further investigation