Medication Compliance Among Patients with Schizophrenia at a Selected Tertiary Hospital in Bangladesh

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.