User:Nad lim/Medication phobia

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Medication phobia, also known as pharmacophobia, is a fear of the use of pharmacological treatments. In severe, excessive and irrational cases it may be a type of specific phobia.

While lack of awareness by patient or doctor of adverse drug reactions can have serious consequences, having a phobia of medications can also have serious detrimental effects on patient health, for example refusal of necessary pharmacological interventions and problems with medication adherence. Medication phobia can also present in parents who are concerned about giving medications to their children, fearing that the medications will do more harm than good.

Adherence measurements
In order to find way to improve medication adherence due to medication phobia ways of measuring adherence must be identified. Various measures have been identified as measurements of medication adherence. Objective measures include bioassays, electronic monitoring, pharmacy refill data, and pill counting/canister weight. Subjective measures include interviews, diary/self-monitoring, and questionnaires.

Predictors
Study have shown that there are various predictors of medication phobia. Sociodemographic data such as gender, age, and education, as well as certain characteristics such as fear of liquid drug forms, fear of solid drug forms, alternative medical habits, belief in conspiracy theories, disgust toward injects and blood, belief about medicine, and anxiety are all consider possible predictors of medication phobia. Medication phobia can also be triggered by unpleasant adverse reactions to medications which are sometimes prescribed inappropriately or at excessive doses. Lack of awareness of the patient's predisposition to adverse effects (e.g. anxious patients and the elderly) and failure to attribute the adverse effects to the drug serves to compound the phobia. Fears of medication use is also prevalent in people who have experienced unpleasant withdrawal effects from psychotropic drugs. Sometimes patients wrongly associate symptoms of an acute disease or illness with medications used to treat the disease or illness.

Treatments/Improving Medication Adherence
Interventions for medication adherence for patients with medication phobia include educational, behavioral, and organizational treatment regimens. Starting at low doses and slowly increasing the medication dosage can avoid medication phobia secondary to adverse effects from developing. For pharmacophobia due to patients wrongly associating symptoms of an illness with a medication given to treat the illness, attempting to convince the patient that the symptoms were not due to the drug but due to the illness the drug was taken to treat can be done by having the patient to take test doses of the drug or another drug in the same drug class.