Importance of the type of pharmacological treatment in patients with severe mental disorder

Introduction The use of long-acting treatments is a common clinical practice in psychiatry. No disease insight and the risk of treatment discontinuation in a significant portion of our patients, increase the demand for psychiatric emergency and hospital admissions. Treatment adherence must be facilitated, taking into account possible side effects and patient´s subjective satisfaction. Objectives -Evaluate the type of long-acting intramuscular treatment in selected patients. -Evaluate the differences in treatment satisfaction between different types of long-acting intramuscular treatments as well as frequency of psychiatric emergency and hospital admissions in the last year. Methods We select patients with different severe mental disorders who stay in a Medium Stay Unit, Sociosanitary Community Residence, Supervise house and Residence for the elderly in Albacete (Spain); all of them, with intramuscular neuroleptic treatment (zuclopenthixol dihydrochloride, aripiprazole long acting, palmitate paliperidone monthly, 3-monthly and 6-monthly) at least 1 year. We evaluate their sociodemographic characteristics, the satisfaction questionnaire with the treatment (TSQM-9) and the rate of psychiatric emergencies and admissions after current intramuscular treatment in last year. Results We have selected 57 patients with an average age of 45.86. 78.94% with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, 12.28% with schizoaffective disorder, 5.26% bipolar disorder and 3.5% unspecified psychotic disorder. We can see in the graphics below that the longer duration of the intramuscular treatment, the greater satisfaction in all the items of the TSQM-9 questionnaire. 31% of the patients with zuclopenthixol dihydrochloride treatment, have gone to psychiatric emergencies and 28% of psychiatric admissions in the last year.18% of the patients with aripiprazole long acting, 17% with paliperidone palmitate long acting-monthly and 12% de 3-monthly have gone to psychiatric emergencies and 15%, 12% and 12% needed psychiatric admissions respectively. Patients with palmitate long acting-monthly have not emergencies or psychiatric admissions in the last year. Image: Image 2: Image 3: Conclusions - The longer long acting of the intramuscular treatments, the better patient satisfaction. - With the longer duration treatment (Palmitate paliperidone LD 6 month), we have lower psychiatric emergencies and hospital admissions. Disclosure of Interest None Declared