[General practitioners' training in psychiatry and prescription of psychotropic drugs. 2. Attitudes of physicians to training in psychotherapy and the extent of their prescriptions].

The object of this investigation was to describe and analyse differences in psychiatric training and attitudes to and employment of psychotropic drugs among general practitioners with and without training in psychotherapy, respectively. The investigation was carried out as a multicentre questionnaire investigation in the County of Aarhus with participation of 192 out of 215 (89%) doctors who were invited. Thirty-nine of the participating general practitioners (20%) had participated in a supervised course in psychoanalytically orientated psychotherapy. Doctors who were trained in psychotherapy had more rarely had appointments in psychiatric departments than other doctors. Doctors trained in psychotherapy prescribed fewer benzodiazepines than other doctors (p less than 0.05) and there was psychotherapy chose psychotherapy more frequently (p = 0.02) and more rarely tendency to a lower total prescription of psychotropic drugs. Doctors trained in a psychotropic drugs (p = 0.004) than doctors without this training as treatment for patients with psychosocial conflicts and they more rarely chose psychotropic drugs to supplement psychotherapy (p less than 0.0001). It is concluded that one of the ways of reducing the massive use of psychotropic drugs in Denmark is to improve general practitioners' training in psychotherapy.