Psychiatrists’ opinion on treatment adherence in Delusional Disorder

Abstract

Introduction

Delusional Disorder (DD) F22 is a disease with low prevalence, probably underdiagnosed by clinical specialists due to the high level of functionality, low awareness of disease, low deterioration of patients and poor adherence to prescribed treatment. Adherence to treatment is considered to be one of the major difficulties that stand in the way of the treatment of DD. The present paper assessed psychiatrists’ opinion of the adherence to treatment of patients with DD.

Material and methods

A self-administered survey was conducted on a sample of psychiatrists proceeding on a wide array of mental health care services. Participants provided their opinions regarding adherence to treatment. Descriptive statistics were subsequently calculated with SPSS.

Results

In the opinion of our participants none of the patients have an active compliance of the treatment, 36% consider that the participation is partial or passive. It is also estimated that 57.5% reject the treatment but not totally and 6.5% believe that rejection is absolute.

Conclusions

Literature informs of the association of poor adherence to treatment and little or no improvement of patients, suggesting the need to address the lack of compliance and adherence to treatment as a crucial aspect to improve the prognosis of DD. To address this problem Long Acting Injections (LAIs) of Atypical Antipsychotics are postulated to be a plausible solution as a good treatment strategy. In order to improve the clinical practice in DD and obtain information for further effectiveness we emphasize the need of implementing clinical studies.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.