Psychotropic medication use among personality disordered young adults. A follow-up study among former adolescent psychiatric inpatients.

Objective: To analyze the use of prescribed psychotropic medication in subjects with personality disorder (PD) diagnosed in early adulthood.
Methods: The study population consisted of former adolescent psychiatric inpatients (N=508). 63 had a diagnosis of PD, including with borderline PD (BPD) (N=38) and other PD (OPD) (N=25). DSM IV-based psychiatric diagnoses in adolescence were based on the Schedule for Affective Disorder and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children Present and Lifetime (K-SADS-PL). The information on in-or outpatient hospital treatments until the end of 2016 were extracted from the National Care Register for Health Care. Lifetime data on purchases of physician-prescribed psychotropic medications was obtained from the Social Insurance Institution of Finland.
Results: 98.4% (N=62) of subjects with PD had purchased at least one type of psychotropic medication during the follow-up period. The use of non-opioid analgesics and antipyretics was over twice as common among subjects with BPD than subjects with OPD (57.9% vs.28.0%, p=0.020). Anxiolytic use was 1.5 times more common among subjects with BPD than subjects with OPD (65.8% vs. 40.0%, p=0.044) CONCLUSIONS: Psychotropic medication use was common among subjects with PD. The use of non-opioid analgesics, antipyretics and anxiolytics was more common among subjects with BPD.
(Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier B.V.)