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Do Psychiatric In-Patients Take their Pills?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

E. H. Hare  and
D. R. C. Willcox
E. H. Hare
Affiliation:
The Bethlem Royal Hospital and The Maudsley Hospital, Monks Orchard Road, Beckenham, Kent
D. R. C. Willcox
Affiliation:
The Bethlem Royal Hospital and The Maudsley Hospital, Monks Orchard Road, Beckenham, Kent
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Extract

In a previous study (Willcox et al., 1965), we reported the results of urine tests on a series of psychiatric out-patients, done with the aim of determining whether the patients were taking their pills as prescribed. We now report a similar study on in-patients. It is a matter of clinical experience that some psychiatric in-patients avoid taking their pills as prescribed, for in-patients who take an overdose in a suicidal gesture often say that they 'saved up’ their prescribed pills in order to do this. There are many other reasons, such as the occurrence of unpleasant side-effects or a belief that the pills are not doing any good, which might lead in-patients to avoid swallowing their pills at medicine-time, and though we should not expect to find this happening as often in in-patients as in out-patients yet the proportion of cases in which this occurs and whether it occurs more often with one type of drug than another are matters of general concern.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 113 , Issue 505 , December 1967 , pp. 1435 - 1439
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1967 

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References

Neve, H. K. (1958). “Demonstration of Largactil (chlorpromazine hydrochloride) in the urine.” J. ment. Sci., 104, 488–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kutt, H., Haynes, J., and McDowell, F. (1966). “Some causes of ineffectiveness of diphenylhydantoin.” Arch. Neurol., 14, 489–492.Google Scholar
Willcox, D. R. C., Gillan, R., and Hare, E. H. (1965). “Do psychiatric out-patients take their drugs?” Brit. med. J., ii, 790–792.Google Scholar
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