Non-adherence to Psychotropic Medications among Mentally ill Patients at the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital

The study examined non-adherence to psychotropic medications among persons living with mental disorders at the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital, Ghana. The descriptive cross-sectional design was adopted for the study. The convenience sampling technique was used to select 100 participants for the study. The Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS-8) by Morisky was adopted for this study. The Cronbach's alpha for the scale was 0.83. Pretest with Crobach's alpha was 0.8. Frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations and Pearson's correlations were used to analyzethe data. The findings of the study showed that non-adherence to psychotropic medications is relatively prevalent among psychiatric patients at the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital and that educational level of participants could be used to predict nonadherence to psychotropic medication. Age and marital status were not positively correlated with nonadherence to psychotropic medication. Patients reported that the items outlined on the instrument were not the causative factors for non-adherence to medication. It is recommended that the Ministry of Health (MoH), Ghana Health Services (GHSs) and Mental Health Authorities (MHAs) should sensitize individuals in the community especially mentally ill patients on the need to adhere to the medications.