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Objectives: Historically, nonadherence to medication has been a major problem faced by health care workers while treating chronic illnesses. Nonadherence to psychotropic medications is known to be associated with poorer treatment outcomes, remarkable risk, and cost to the medical system in managing psychiatric illness. For care providers, partial compliance or discontinuation of medications represents the difficulty of maintaining treatment successes over time. In this study, we intended to assess medication adherence and to understand the reasons for nonadherence in patients with major psychiatric disorders in southern India. Methods: This is a cross-sectional observational study, done from January to June 2023. With the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision diagnosis, we assessed patients with psychotic disorders, bipolar affective disorders, and major depressive disorder. The Medication Adherence Rating Scale (MARS) was used to assess medication adherence. The patients also completed copies of semi-structured questionnaire on their sociodemographic characteristics, their medications, and reasons for nonadherence. Results: A total of 147 subjects were assessed. We found that 68.0% of subjects were poorly adherent to the treatment based on MARS, and that only 32.0% of them were strictly adherent to the treatment. The reasons for poor adherences to the medication treatment were carelessness or forgetfulness (21.8%), adverse effects of the medications (16.3%), and the perception of the subject of feeling better (15.6%). Conclusion: More than two thirds of the subjects was found to be non-adherent to the medications. Assessing various reasons for medication adherence will help find strategies to improve medication adherence and thus outcome of the treatment.

Background: Chronic headache greatly affects the quality of life and also constitutes a significant burden on the health system. Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of telephone-based follow-up in a cohort of headache patients in India. Materials and Methods: This was a longitudinal cohort study of patients with episodic headache with one physical visit in the neurology outpatient services in the last year. Two neurologists conducted the telephone follow up (TFU) of included patients 12 weeks apart. We evaluated the following: (1) objective characterization of headache, (2) coexistent depression and anxiety, (3) patient satisfaction, (4) treatment adherence, and (5) changes in medications. Results: A total of 214 out of 274 eligible patients were included in the cohort. The mean age was 31.74 ± 7.77 years (18–45), and 164 (77%) were females. Migraine without aura was the most common diagnosis in 159 (74%). The mean disease duration was 78.01 ± 70.15 months (8–360). Concurrent depression and anxiety were noted in 87 (40.6%) and 45 (21%) of the patients, respectively. There was a significant improvement in the headache frequency (23.82 vs. 1.06, P < 0.001), severity (7.21 vs. 2.62, P = 0.032), and Headache Impact 6-item score (58.12 vs. 38.01, P = 0.014) at baseline and second follow-up. The satisfaction level to TFU in the first and second interviews was 94.4% and 97.2%, respectively. Conclusion: Telephone-based follow-up is a feasible alternative for repeat outpatient consultation of headache patients.