Medication compliance in schizophrenic out patients with psychoactive substance use co-morbidity: a cross-sectional study

Background: Medication adherence is an important issue in the treatment and management of persons with psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia. Apart from side effects and inefficient outcomes of psychiatric medications, substance abuse also complicates the adherence pattern to the prescribed medications. Present study was designed to estimate the magnitude of medication non-adherence and its correlates in patients with schizophrenia having co-morbid psychoactive substance use.Method: The 60 schizophrenic patients with active substance use were taken from OPD of institute of mental health and hospital, Agra. Positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS), alcohol, smoking and substance involvement screening test (ASSIST), medication adherence rating scale (MARS) and Morisky 8-item medication adherence questionnaire (MMAQ-8) were used to gather relevant clinical data along with a proforma for recording socio-demographic characteristics.Results: The results revealed an alarming level of medication adherence. The 91.7% sample (55 patients) met the criteria for medication non-adherence. Majority of the patients were using alcohol (58.3%) and cannabis (51.7%). Conclusions: Given the high rate of medication non-compliance it is suggested that specific intervention aimed at compliance to prescribed medication is needed in this population