Abstract: Introduction: Psychiatric disorders form an important public health priority and major causes of morbidity. Drug utilization studies are a pre-requisite for the formulation of drug policies. This review identifies the problems that arise from drug usage in health care delivery system and highlights the current approaches to the rational use of drugs. Objectives: to delineate the various drugs used in psychiatric disorders to find discrepancies, if any, between the actual and the ideal prescribing pattern of psychotropic drugs and to assess prevalence of various psychiatric illnesses . Methodology