Abstract
The scope of this study was to investigate the prevalence of psychotropic drug use and its association with the overburden felt by family caregivers of Psychosocial Care Center users. This is a cross-sectional study performed with 537 family caregivers in the 21st Health Region of the State of Rio Grande do Sul. The prevalence of psychotropic drug use was calculated with a 95% confidence interval (95%CI) and the heterogeneity tests were performed between the strata of each independent variable. The association between psychotropic drug use and overburden was tested using Poisson regression with the calculation of the adjusted prevalence ratios. The prevalence of psychotropic drug use was 30%, with higher consumption among women (40%), individuals aged 41 -50 years (42.06%), with 5 to 8 years of schooling (37.57%), with income between 0.5 and 1 minimum wage per capita (34.43%), individuals who did not share caregiving duties (35.53%) and those who cared for patients with a major degree of independence (36.67%). The overburden felt was in direct relationship with the outcome, namely the higher the level of overburden the greater the prevalence of psychotropic drug use, reaching 60.1% at the highest level and remaining strongly associated with the outcome even in the adjusted analysis.
Key words:
Psychotropic drugs; Caregivers; Community mental health services