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All medications, except in certain exceptional cases, must be prescribed with an electronic prescription. This allows the treating physician to view all medications prescribed to the patient by other specialists and to avoid duplicating prescriptions for the same medications, improper dosing, and drug interactions that are dangerous to health. It’s unfortunate, but currently up to 30%. Psychotropic drugs that are dispensed in pharmacies are still prescribed on printed prescription forms. There are also cases in which paper prescriptions are falsified and therefore psychotropic drugs are obtained illegally in pharmacies.
For these reasons, the Ministry of Health has initiated a change in the procedure for writing prescriptions, which provides that as of 2021. July 1 Psychotropic medications, if prescribed in paper prescription forms, can only be prescribed in forms prescription of drugs to prescribe narcotics (Form 2). This will prevent the ongoing falsification of prescriptions for psychotropic medications and will encourage physicians to prescribe electronic prescriptions. According to pharmacists, this would be an effective tool to prevent prescription counterfeiting that pharmacy workers still face on a daily basis.
This amendment will also help improve the rational use of psychotropic drugs. The irrational use of psychotropic drugs in the population can cause addiction, anxiety, agitation, irritability, aggression. It also increases the chances of falls and fractures, and increases the chances of accidents for drivers who use these drugs irrationally.
Robertas Badaras, head of the Toxicology Center of the Vilnius Republican Hospital, anesthesiologist-resuscitator, points out that psychotropic drugs, whose active substance affects brain metabolism, can cause addiction in people with more sensitive mental health. “Addiction can be reduced relatively without taking the drugs that caused it for a long time, but in order to save life and sober mind, you should never use these drugs again, because addiction is a rapidly progressing and recurring disease,” says Badar.
Concerns remain about over-the-counter prescription drug use habits among teens. According to the 2019 Survey on the Use of Alcohol and Other Psychoactive Substances in European Schools (ESPAD), one in five participants in Lithuania indicated that they had used sedatives or hypnotics at least once in their life without a prescription.
The worst situation regarding the use of prescription drugs without drugs among adolescents is only in Lithuania and Latvia, where 20% of sedatives or hypnotics, respectively, were used at least once in their life without a prescription. and 21 percent. teenagers. The lowest level of use of these drugs was
Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. The largest gender differences among adolescents who take these drugs are found in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, where girls are more likely to use these drugs than boys (more than 10 percentage points).
The Ministry of Health recalls that physical dependence on drugs manifests itself in nausea, fear, insomnia or hallucinations. Psychological dependence is a feeling that makes you think that you cannot stop taking medicine.
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