objectives: (1) To study the prescription pattern of psychotropic drugs amongst patients attending the psychiatry outpatient department (OPD) in atertiary care hospital, Mandya, (2) to evaluate patterns and recent trends in psychotropic polypharmacy.Methods: This was a prospective, cross-sectional and observational study, done over 8 weeks, among patients attending psychiatry OPD. The most recentprescribed psychopharmacological medication of the patients were collected in a standard proforma and analyzed according to World Health Organization(WHO) prescription indicators. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation were used wherever appropriate.Results: A total of 405 prescriptions were evaluated. Anti-epileptics (22.9%), antidepressants (19.7%) and antipsychotics (11.0%) were the commonlyadvocated drug groups in more than half of prescriptions. Phenobarbitone (30.2%), escitalopram (27.9%), and risperidone (48.9%) were commonly useddrugs among anti-epileptics, antidepressants, and antipsychotics, respectively. Nutraceuticals constituted 8.7% of total drugs. Percentage of drugs prescribedby generic name was 54.9%. Polypharmacy was prevalent in 2.7% of prescriptions. Percentage of drugs prescribed as fixed-dose combination was 21%.Conclusion: The WHO guidelines regarding prescription of drugs were followed consistently. The issue of prescribing by brand names need to beaddressed. Polypharmacy was advocated for negligible number of subjects and the reasons were justifiable.Keywords: Prescription audit, Polypharmacy, Psychopharmacological agent
