A PROSPECTIVE STUDY ON CATEGORIES OF MEDICATIONS PREFERRED FOR SELF MEDICATION PRACTICE
Sharon Bessy Thomas*, Jayakumar K. S. , Roshni Thankam James, Jesly Susan Thomas and Reza Rajesh
ABSTRACT
Self-medication practice is the use of medications to treat self-diagnosed disorders or symptoms, or the
intermittent or continued use of a prescribed drug for chronic or recurrent disease or symptoms. The number of
over-the-counter medications has been increased significantly, allowing more individuals to practice selfmedication. The major problems associated with self medication practices are serious health hazards like drug
resistance, drug side effects, wastage of resources, and death. Drug related problems include incorrect selfdiagnosis, incorrect manner of administration, under treated indications, drug duplication, inappropriate dosage
form, drug interactions, contraindications, wrong drugs, masking of a severe disease and risk of dependence. The
main purpose of this study is to assess the various categories of drugs used for self medication. Our study was a
community based prospective study conducted among 250 people in Eraviperoor Gramapanchayath for a period of
6 months. The salient finding of our study was that the major categories of medicines used for self medication
practices were antipyretics, analgesics, gastrointestinal medications, antihistamines and cough syrups.
Keywords: Self medication, drug resistance, contraindications, drug interactions,antipyretics.
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