Evaluation of Psychiatric Patient Health-Related Quality of Life and Drug Prescribing Assessment

School of Pharmacy, RK University, Rajkot, Gujarat, India

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Published online: 21 January 2026

Abstract

This study explores how psychiatric medicines are being used and how they relate to the day-to-day wellbeing of patients attending the psychiatry department of a civil hospital. To understand this, various patient-related factors were considered, including age, gender, body weight, addiction history, level of education, occupation, and socioeconomic background. In addition, the type of psychiatric diagnosis and the pattern of prescribed medications were carefully reviewed. The core purpose of the study was to assess both the health-related quality of life of psychiatric patients and the appropriateness of the drug prescribing practices used in their treatment. This investigation was carried out over a span of 18 months in the Department of Psychiatry at Civil Hospital, Rajkot. Patients meeting the predefined inclusion criteria were systematically enrolled into the study. Each participant was then categorized according to their clinical diagnosis, age, body weight, gender, educational background, and socioeconomic status. Alongside this classification, their health-related quality of life was carefully evaluated to understand how these factors influenced their overall wellbeing. Information was gathered from a total of three hundred patients. Among them, one hundred eighty-five (61.62%) were women and one hundred fifteen (38.38%) were men. In terms of clinical diagnosis, schizophrenia emerged as the most common condition, affecting 45.48% of the study population, followed by anxiety disorders at 19.25%. Reflecting these patterns, antipsychotic medications were the most frequently prescribed (60%), with anxiolytic drugs also widely used, accounting for 40% of the prescriptions. This study provides a polaroid of how medicines are used in psychiatric care and how these treatments relate to patients' day-to-day wellbeing. To build this picture, a range of patient characteristics were examined, including age, gender, body weight, history of addiction, level of education, occupation, and socioeconomic background. In addition, the specific psychiatric diagnoses and the details of the prescribed drug regimens were carefully reviewed, allowing an integrated assessment of both drug utilization patterns and health-related quality of life in this population.