Abstract:
This study aimed to determine the medication compliance of schizophrenic patients at the
National Institute of Mental health, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. This was a descriptive
cross-sectional study. A semi-structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Of the 303 patients
who were suffering from Schizophrenia, most of the patients (63.4%) were from urban, more than
three-quarters (85.1%) were female, almost three-quarters (74.3%) were Muslim, mostly (82.2%) were
married, and more than half (53.5%) were housewives. The mean age was 36.5, and the monthly family
income mean of the patients was 27693.1. In our study, we found that about 85.0% of the respondents
with low medication compliance. Factors for instance problems while getting admitted, relationships
with the healthcare providers, forget to take medication, careless taking of medication, medicate when
feeling sick, unnatural control by medication, thoughts are clear on medication, and feeling weird while
on medication are significantly associated with suffering from Schizophrenia. Thus, the prevalence of
medication non-compliance was found to be high among patients with Schizophrenia. Educating the
patients to better understand the illness, medications, and their potential side effects might be a proper
helpful intervention strategy to improving compliance to antipsychotic medication treatment.
