Health and social characteristics of long-term psychotropic drug takers.

Prolonged use of drugs for the treatment of specific chronic disorders such as hypertension. diabetes and asthma can be explained largely in clinical terms. The use of psychotropic drugs, on the other hand appears to be in response to such a broad range of indications that prolonged use requires investigation from a sociomedical perspective. In this paper we consider the contributions of illness behavior and social network theories to an understanding of long-term use of psychotropic drugs. The present sample emerged from a cohort of general practice patients a new episode of psychotropic drug treatment. Twenty-six patients from a cohort of 124 continued to receive prescriptions for at least 6 months and 19 were interviewed for this pilot study.