Health professionals' attitudes to depot injection antipsychotic medication: a systematic review

Healthcare professionals are key providers of information about antipsychotic medication
and may have a significant influence on the decisions that service users make
about how their medication is delivered. This systematic review aimed to explore
health professionals’ attitudes and beliefs towards antipsychotic depot medication. A
systematic search of AMED, BNI, CINAHL, EMBASE, HEALTH BUSINESS ELITE,
HMIC, MEDLINE and PsycINFO was carried out, as well as hand searches of journals
and citation searches. Studies were selected if the terms ‘attitudes/beliefs’ and ‘depot/
injection’ were included in the title or abstract, if health professionals were participants
in the study and if original data were included. The search strategy produced 131
papers. Eight relevant studies were then selected for the review. They included six
cross-sectional surveys and two qualitative studies. It was shown that the research
carried out is still very sparse. Depots are seen as old fashioned, stigmatizing, causing
side effects and being costly, and they are often not prescribed because of a presumed
adherence to oral medication. More research needs to be carried out to further explore
these issues, to look at the role of non-medical prescribers and explore the relationship
between health professionals’ attitudes and those of service users.