Medication adherence levels and differential use of mental-health services in the treatment of schizophrenia

Abstract Background Adherence to antipsychotics for schizophrenia is associated with favorable clinical outcomes. This study compared annual mental-health service utilization by recent medication adherence levels for patients treated for schizophrenia, and assessed whether adherence levels change from pre- to post-psychiatric hospitalization. Methods We analyzed data from a large prospective, non-interventional study of patients treated for schizophrenia in the United States, conducted between 7/1997 and 9/2003. Detailed mental-health resource utilization was systematically abstracted from medical records and augmented with patients' self report. Medication possession ratio (MPR) with any antipsychotic in the 6 months prior to enrollment was used to categorize patients as: adherent (MPR ≥ 80%, N = 1758), partially adherent (MPR ≥ 60% Results Adherent patients had a lower rate of psychiatric hospitalization compared with partially adherent and non-adherent patients (p Conclusion Adherence is associated with lower utilization of acute care services and greater engagement in outpatient mental-health treatment. Adherence is a potentially dynamic phenomenon, which may improve, at least temporarily, following patients' psychiatric hospitalizations.