Prescription pattern and cost analysis of antipsychotics in a tertiary hospital in south- South Nigeria.

To promote rational drug use in developing countries, it is important to assess drug use pattern using the World Health Organisation (WHO) drug use indicators. Therefore the main objective of this study is to assess the prescription patterns and undertake drug cost analysis at the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Benin City using some of the WHO core drug use indicators. This is a retrospective, crosssectional survey and the sample was selected using systematic random sampling. The 540 patients encountered were reviewed from January 2014 – September 2014. The average number of the drugs prescribed per encounter was 2.3 with a range between 1 and 6. The percentage of encounters in which an antibiotic or injection was prescribed was 2.0% (n=11) and 40.9% (n=221) respectively. The percentage of drugs prescribed by generic name and from essential drug list was 92.5% (n=1165) and 70.0% (n=880) respectively. The oral antipsychotics prescribed (86%) included haloperidol, chlorpromazine, trifluoperazine, thioridazine, olanzapine and risperidone. The depot preparations (17%) were fluphenazine decanoate and flupenthixol decanoate. The cost of prescriptions ranged from N90-N18, 405. Our study revealed that the prescription patterns at the hospital studied were not in conformity with the WHO guidelines. Atypicals, are very expensive and unaffordable to the majority of patients in the study setting. This indicates the need for measures to reduce cost of newer psychotropic drugs, to increase their availability and use for enhanced quality of life of mentally ill patients in Nigeria.Keywords; :prescription pattern, antipsychotics, rational dru