Purpose:
Non-adherence is likely to remain a major public health problem despite treatment advances. Rates of adherence in first episode psychosis patients differ in different studies; between 40- 60% of patients do fully adhere to their treatment. Of those who discontinued their medicine about 40% is due to patient decision. Reasons for non-adherence are not investigated adequately. Studies have addressed the consequences of this issue rather than causes.
The purpose of this study is to investigate which experiential factors that potentially might affect adherence with medication in adults with psychotic disorders.
Materials and Methods:
In a descriptive qualitative sub-study in the ongoing Norwegian Early Intervention in Psychosis, TIPS 2 study, where twenty patients participated in semi-structured interviews 2 years after inclusion. They were still using or had used antipsychotics during the last 2 years. Data were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.
Results:
This study had elucidated patients’ attitude to AP and percept the incentives and barriers that influence adherence. Our study revealed that positive experiences related to the hospital stay, sufficient information at the right time, involvement of patients in decision-making, insight and beneficial effect of AP had a vigorous impacted on adherence. Most participants experienced admission in psychiatric wards as a difficult and protracted process. Many patients retrospectively reported lack of insight (caused by their psychotic condition) at the time of admission, which was seems to cause resistance to hospitalization and reduced the willingness to adhere to AP treatment. When patients are struggling with poor insight in the acute stage of disease, it will become difficult for the psychiatrists to involve them in choosing process, in addition, patients are less susceptible to information in this phase.
Conclusion:
Adherence is an intractable issue and the patient is not alone responsible for jeopardize it; many factors can attribute to cause non-adherence.
