OBJECTIVES

: To describe the characteristic and compliance for patients who were prescribed with antidepressant in Korea.

METHODS

: The study was a cross-sectional study using the sample database from HIRA (Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service) National Health Insurance (NHI) claim records in Korea from January 2016 until December 2016. The number of total patients in dataset were 28,508,520 and the patients who were prescribed for SSRI, SNRI from February to September in 2016 were identified. Complaince was defined as the patients who take an antidepressant over 2months(56days). The periods were studied as follows: pre-index period defined as one month prior to the index date and the enrollment period was 8months, and an average follow-up period defined 2months(56days).We described demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients using %, mean, SD and conducted a chi-Square test and t-test to detect a correlation factor. SAS 9.4 was used in this study and a p-value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

RESULTS

: CONCLUSIONS

: Despite increasing the importance of antidepressant’s compliance to treat depression, the most of the patients had suboptimal compliance and antidepressants were frequently prescribed for patienets whose primary diagnosis was not major depression.Further study is needed to investigate factors related with the suboptimal compliance for the antidepressant in Korea.