Abstract

Kavitha Dongerkery*, Pradnya Deolekar and Pramila Yadav

ABSTRACT

Background: Anxiety is one of the most widespread psychiatric disorders. Anxiolytics remain the main stay of treatment. There is limited evidence in Indian literature regarding the prescribing pattern of drugs used in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Hence a drug utilization study was conducted to assess the prescription trends of anxiolytics in a tertiary care centre. Methods: The study population comprised of all newly diagnosed patients of anxiety attending the tertiary care hospital. This was a part of a study which included all patients with psychiatric disorders. Results: Clonazepam 151(72.24%) was the most commonly prescribed anti-anxiety drug followed by lorazepam 40(19.14%), diazepam 13(6.22%), etizolam 5(2.4%) was the least prescribed anxiolytic. Conclusions: The published evidences confirm that Cloanazepam was the preferred anxiolytic. This suggests that there is trend of using shorter acting benzodiazepines in the treatment of anxiety disorders.