PSYCHOTROPIC-DRUG INTAKE IN RESIDENTS NEWLY ADMITTED TO NURSING-HOMES

While several surveys have shown that psychotropic drugs are frequentl y used by nursing home residents, no studies have been performed to in vestigate whether the rates of drug use increase during the stay in nu rsing homes or whether residents have taken these drugs already before admission. Therefore, we investigated 262 residents admitted to rural and urban nursing homes in Austria for prevalence of psychotropic dru g intake before admission, shortly after admission, and 6 months later . Two weeks after admission, 72.1% of the residents were being treated with psychotropics, while 6 months later 79.0% were receiving these d rugs. The significantly higher rates of psychotropic drug use among th e psychiatrically ill and in those suffering from sleeping problems su ggest that these drugs were prescribed aptly, but residents without ap propriate criteria for drug intake were often also treated with psycho tropics. During 3 months before admission to nursing homes, 45.5% of t he sample reported having taken psychotropics. In more than half of re sidents without drug intake before admission, psychotropic treatment w as initiated within the first 2 weeks after admission, while during th e first 6 months after admission the rate of drug use increased only s lightly. This suggests that a large percentage of psychotropic intake is due to nursing home orders.