Nine-year trends in the morbidity of mental disorders and psychotropic drug utilization in Croatia: over-diagnosis and over-utilization?

Overall drug overuse, including psychotropic, is the Croatian reality. Therefore, in between 2000 and 2012, the interventions to control drug overspending were undertaken. The main aims of the study are: to determine the morbidity trends of mental disorders registered in family medicine (FM), the trends in psychotropic drug utilization and to identify whether the trends of utilization have any relation to the interventions. The results indicate that mental disorders represent a high disease burden in Croatia. It was also present a higher burden of psychotropic drug utilization; second ranked in the total drug utilization during the nine-year follow up period. The utilization of psycholeptic's, was even higher; from 2004 to 2008; those drugs were ranked first in terms of utilization. Between 20-25% of Croatia's total health care budget is usually spent on drugs. The interventions that are currently being implemented to control drug utilization have not brought about any changes.