Influences of the Diffusion of Psychotropic Medication

Marisa Domino, Ph.D., Principal Investigator

The diffusion of new behavioral health technologies has been very uneven. Some psychotropic medications have diffused very quickly while others have not had much success developing a substantial market share. In order to advance models of best practice, it is important to understand the factors that underlie these varying rates of diffusion. This project is based on a career development award from the National Institute of Mental Health for training in pharmaceutical institutions and policies, psychiatric clinical decision-making and psychopharmacology in order to inform economic research on psychotropic medications. The study includes three research aims to characterize the diffusion of psychotropic medication across a range of insurance settings, both managed and non-managed care, nationally and in several local markets in an effort to understand the inhibitors and promoters of the adoption and diffusion rate of new pharmaceutical technologies in the mental health area. The specific research aims of this proposal are 1) to describe major aggregate patterns of diffusion of principal new drugs for the treatment of behavioral health disorders, 2) to determine whether market characteristics and characteristics of psychotropic drug products and their competitors influence the diffusion of drugs at the market (aggregate) level, and 3) to develop and test behavioral models of drug diffusion at the individual level.