Métodos de valoración de la adherencia al tratamiento psiquiátrico en la práctica clínica

Adherence to adequately prescribed medications is essential for an effective psychopharmacotherapy. Non-adherence to psychoactive medications is a significant barrier to the successful treatment of psychiatric disorders in the clinical practice and has been linked to poor treatment outcomes such as increased risk of relapse and recurrence, as well as increased healthcare costs. Adherence to prescribed treatments in psychiatric practice is a multifactorial issue that includes patient-centered factors, therapy-related factors, healthcare system factors, social and economic factors, and disease factors. However, despite the relevance of the contribution of that group of variables in predicting adherence, a considerable level of unexplained variance still remain. Moreover, there is no ‘gold standard’ measure of medication adherence since all available methods have their limitations. This paper focuses on the difficulties involved in evaluating psychiatric patients’ adherence in real clinical world and describes the most relevant methods to assess adherence.