Awareness and Practice on Management of Side Effects of Antipsychotic Drugs among Patients Receiving Maintenance Treatment at Unde Hospital, Srirampur

The treatment of the mentally ill throughout time is not generally a pretty picture. In modern era after introduction of antipsychotic drugs there is tremendous improvement in psychotic illness symptoms. Antipsychotic drugs show good improvement in psychotic symptoms of disease but along with it having side effects which become reason for relapse in treatment.

1. To assess awareness & practice on side effects of antipsychotic drugs and its management among patients receiving maintenance treatment. 2. To find correlation between awareness and practice on management of side effect of antipsychotic drugs. 3. To determine association between awareness and practices on management of side effects of antipsychotic drugs with their selected demographic variables.

A descriptive study design with cross sectional survey approach was used. The data was collected from 100 patients who are on maintenance treatment and receiving Antipsychotic drugs from Unde mental Hospital, Shrirampur. The self-prepared dichotomous questionnaires and checklist was used for data collection.

Mean score of Awareness on side effects of antipsychotic drugs and its management was 54.62 with SD ±3.33 and mean score on practice done to avoid side effects of antipsychotic drugs was 52.94 with SD ±2.70 which indicates that patients receiving maintenance treatment had average level of awareness.

Antipsychotic medications have various side effects, those patients doing regular follow up and are on maintenance treatment should have knowledge regarding side effects o antipsychotic drugs to live the life normally and in productive way.