HOW COMPLIANT ARE MOST PATIENTS TAKING PROZAC?
It is a mysterious fact of human nature mat patients are generally not compliant. They don’t take
their full dose of penicillin, they forget to bring their blood pressure pills on weekend trips, and they self-regulate, increasing or decreasing the dosage, often by at least 40%. Studies have shown that only 50% of the time do patients take their medications as prescribed. And in some surveys the number is as high as 93%.
Patients on Prozac are much more compliant than those on other antidepressants. In the combined data of all the Prozac clinical trials, patients taking tricyclic antidepressants stopped taking their medication at approximately twice the rate as those on Prozac. The main reasons for this difference are that Prozac has fewer side effects man other antidepressants and that patients on Prozac need to swallow only one or two pills a day on the average, while patients taking TCAs need to take between three and six pills daily.
An additional factor in the antidepressant equation is contact with the doctor. Studies have shown that the longer the period between visits to the physician, the poorer the compliance rate: patients who see the doctor on a weekly basis are more compliant than those who monthly appointments, who are more compliant than those who see the doctor every two to three months.
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