Psychotropics prescribed to the US elderly in the early and mid 1980s: Prescribing patterns of primary care practitioners, psychiatrists, and other physicians

Primary care practitioners are significant providers of mental health services to older Americans. The most common mental health service provided by primary care practitioners to this segment of the population is psychotropic drugs. A USA national data base was analyzed to compare the psychotropic prescribing patterns of primary care practitioners with psychiatrists and other office‐based specialists in both the early and mid 1980s. Prescribing patterns for six different classes of psychotropics were contrasted for patients 55 years of age and older and those 15‐54. Results indicate that primary care practioners were by far the largest prescribers of psychotropics for patients 55 and over at both time periods. This pattern held for most of the individual psychotropic drug classes. In contrast to psychiatrists, primary care practitioners infrequently included a mental disorder diagnosis when they prescribed a psychotropic drug. In addition, primary care practitioners included a mental disorder diagnosis less frequently when they prescribed for the older group than when they prescribed for the younger group. These findings may be used to benefit the training of non‐psychiatrist physicians in the diagnosing and treating of mental health disorders found among older adults.