Drug safety in psychiatry--an objective for drug monitoring in phase IV.

This survey deals with methods to achieve drug safety within the phase IV of psychotropic drug development. Data related to adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are very heterogeneous and have to be collected from very different sources. A sophisticated method, called hospital-based drug monitoring, serves as an important tool for assessment of ADRs in in-patients. The techniques of assessment developed in the context of drug monitoring will be described in detail in this paper. The data obtained may also serve for the evaluation of efficacy and economy of drug treatment in psychiatric in-patients. Moreover, drug monitoring in hospitals may have some value for residents' training in psychiatry, and for generating of hypotheses in clinical pharmacology and biological psychiatry.