Medication use and mortality

Abstract

A logistic regression analysis of the association among specific causes of mortality and indices of psychotropic medication use was carried out among 722 psychiatric inpatient deaths and age, sex, diagnosis, and length of stay matched controls. Overall findings revealed remarkably few significant associations between death and drug use. Of the significant findings, an increased proportion of dead patients in three categories were using piperidine phenothiazines at death while young male patients dying of heart disease tended to be receiving significantly higher average daily doses of medications with strong anticholinergic effects than controls, often in combination. On the positive side, elderly living patients tended to be receiving tricyclic antidepressants for longer durations than controls for several death categories, suggesting a possible beneficial effect of medication use.