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©The Author(s) 2026. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. Jan 19, 2026; 16(1): 109365
Published online Jan 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i1.109365
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, 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 Phar
Received: May 9, 2025
Revised: June 17, 2025
Accepted: October 14, 2025
Published online: January 19, 2026
Processing time: 236 Days and 22.7 Hours
Revised: June 17, 2025
Accepted: October 14, 2025
Published online: January 19, 2026
Processing time: 236 Days and 22.7 Hours
Core Tip
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.