The association between concurrent psychotropic medications and self-reported adherence with taking a mood stabilizer

  • Michael Bauer, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
  • Tasha Glenn, ChronoRecord Association, United States
  • Paul Grof, Mood Disorders Center of Ottawa, Canada
  • Kemal Sagduyu, University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine, United States
  • Martin Alda, Dalhousie University, Canada
  • Assoc Prof Greg Murray, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
  • Rita Schmid, University Medical Center Regensburg, Germany
  • Peter Whybrow, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), United States

Objective: Multiple medications are routinely prescribed for the treatment of bipolar disorder, yet complexity in medication regimens may negatively influence adherence. This study investigated whether the daily number of psychotropic medications or the daily number of pills were associated with self-reported adherence with taking a mood stabilizer.

Methods: Patients self-reported their mood and medications taken daily for about 6 months. To enter the data, all patients used ChronoRecord software on a home computer in their native language. Adherence was defined as taking at least one pill of any mood stabilizer daily. Univariate general linear models (GLM) were used to estimate if adherence was associated with the number of daily medications and the number of pills, controlling for age. The association between mean daily dosage of mood stabilizer and adherence was also estimated using a GLM.

Results: 312 patients (mean age 38.4 ± 10.9 years) returned 58,106 days of data and took a mean of 3.1 ± 1.6 psychotropic medications daily (7.0 ± 4.2 pills). There was no significant association between either the daily number of medications, or the daily number of pills, and adherence. For most mood stabilizers, the mean daily dosage was significantly smaller for patients with a lower adherence.

Conclusions: The number of concurrent psychotropic medications may not be associated with adherence for patients with bipolar disorder. Patients with lower adherence may be taking smaller dosages of mood stabilizers. Further studies of this issue are indicated.