Haider A, Saha L, Basu D. Patterns of utilization of antipsychotic drugs and direct medical costs among patients with schizophrenia in a tertiary care hospital. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(1): 109365 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i1.109365]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Lekha Saha, MD, Full Professor, Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Sector 12, Chandigarh 0172, India. lekhasaha@rediffmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Psychiatry
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Retrospective Cohort Study
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This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Jan 19, 2026 (publication date) through Dec 31, 2025
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World Journal of Psychiatry
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2220-3206
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Baishideng Publishing Group Inc, 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 160, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA
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Haider A, Saha L, Basu D. Patterns of utilization of antipsychotic drugs and direct medical costs among patients with schizophrenia in a tertiary care hospital. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(1): 109365 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i1.109365]
World J Psychiatry. Jan 19, 2026; 16(1): 109365 Published online Jan 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i1.109365
Patterns of utilization of antipsychotic drugs and direct medical costs among patients with schizophrenia in a tertiary care hospital
Aqeel Haider, Lekha Saha, Debashish Basu
Aqeel Haider, Lekha Saha, Department of Pharmacology, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh 0172, India
Debashish Basu, Department of Psychiatry, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh 0172, India
Author contributions: Haider A collected and analyzed the data; Saha L and Basu D supervised the study; Haider A, Saha L, and Basu D conceptualized the design of the study and prepared the first draft of the manuscript; and all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, approval No. INT/IEC/2021/SPL-1090.
Informed consent statement: As the analysis and writing did not involve the patient’s private information, informed consent from the patient is not required.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its supporting information files. Additional data will be made available on request according to the journal policy.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Lekha Saha, MD, Full Professor, Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Sector 12, Chandigarh 0172, India. lekhasaha@rediffmail.com
Received: May 9, 2025 Revised: June 17, 2025 Accepted: October 14, 2025 Published online: January 19, 2026 Processing time: 237 Days and 0.2 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Drug utilization research has an important role in assisting the healthcare administration to know, compute, and refine the prescription whose principal objective is to enable the rational use of drugs. Research in developing nations relating to the cost of treatment is scarce when compared with developed countries. Thus, the drug utilization research studies from developing nations are most needed, and their number has been growing.
AIM
To evaluate patterns of utilization of antipsychotic drugs and direct medical cost analysis in patients newly diagnosed with schizophrenia.
METHODS
The present study was observational in type and based on a retrospective cohort to evaluate patterns of utilization of antipsychotic drugs using World Health Organization (WHO) core prescribing indicators and anatomical therapeutic chemical/defined daily dose indicators. We also calculated direct medical costs for a period of 6 months.
RESULTS
This study has found that atypical antipsychotics are the mainstay of treatment for schizophrenia in every age group and subcategories of schizophrenia. The evaluation based on WHO prescribing indicators showed a low average number of drugs per prescription and low prescribing frequency of antipsychotics from the National List of Essential Medicines 2015 and the WHO Essential Medicines List 2019. The total mean drug cost of our study was 1396 Indian rupees. The total mean cost due to the investigation in our study was 1017.34 Indian rupees. Therefore, the total mean direct medical cost incurred on patients in our study was 4337.28 Indian rupees.
CONCLUSION
The information from the present study can be used for reviewing and updating treatment policy at the institutional level.
Core Tip: This study found that atypical antipsychotics had the highest prescribing frequency among antipsychotics in all schizophrenia categories. Olanzapine was the most frequently prescribed atypical antipsychotic. Half of the patients received concomitant drugs due to the presence of psychiatric and non-psychiatric comorbidities. Trihexyphenidyl had the highest prescribing frequency among concomitant drugs. There was a low average number of drugs per prescription, low prescribing frequency of antipsychotics, and low prescribing frequency of injectable formulations of antipsychotics. The present study provided useful data to review and update treatment policy.
