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, causingside 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.