Mental Health Institute, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, China
Min Zhao
Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China; Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai, China; and CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China; and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai, China
Background Benzodiazepine receptor agonists (BZRAs) are commonly used clinically and data on their hazardous use from large populations of psychiatric patients is limited. Aims To assess the current status of hazardous BZRA use and related factors in Chinese out-patient psychiatric settings. Method The study included out-patients with at least one BZRA prescription from five psychiatric settings in east, central and west China in 2018. Demographic and prescription information were extracted from the electronic prescription database. We defined the co-occurrence of overdose and long-term use as hazardous use, and patients whose recorded diagnoses did not meet any indications approved by the Chinese Food and Drug Administration as over-indication users. Additionally, 200 hazardous users were randomly selected for follow-up interview to confirm the actual situation. Results Among 720 054 out-patients, 164 450 (22.8%) had at least one BZRA prescription; 55.9% of patients were prescribed over-indication and 3% were defined as hazardous users. Multilevel multivariate regression analysis with hospital as a random effect showed that factors associated with hazardous use were older age (18–64 years: β = 0.018; 95% CI 0.013–0.023; >65 years: β = 0.015; 95% CI 0.010–0.021), male (β = 0.005, 95% CI 0.003–0.007), over-indication (β = 0.013, 95% CI 0.012–0.015), more out-patient visits (β = 0.006, 95% CI 0.006–0.006) and more visits to different doctors (β = 0.007, 95% CI 0.007–0.008); 98.5% of hazardous users (197/200) could not be contacted. Conclusions BZRAs are commonly used and there is a relatively large proportion of over-indication users among Chinese psychiatric out-patients. However, only a small proportion of hazardous users were detected. The study highlights how to use prescription data to support improvements in clinical practice.
