First, we charted the change in the number of visits for anxiety
disorders in which an antipsychotic medication was prescribed
and considered this change relative to trends in visits in which
antidepressants or sedative/hypnotics were prescribed across the
same period. We next examined sociodemographic and clinical
correlates of antipsychotic prescribing in visits for anxiety disorders.
Third, we assessed time trends in antipsychotic medication
treatment in visits for anxiety disorders across strata based on
clinical and sociodemographic characteristics, adjusting for the
effects of other demographic and clinical characteristics.
Analyses were adjusted for visit weights, clustering, and stratification
of data using design elements provided by the National
Center for Health Statistics. When adjusted for these elements,
survey data represent annual visits to U.S. office-based physicians
(16). We examined time trends in visits in which antipsychotic
medication was prescribed using multivariate binary logistic
models. The survey year was transformed by subtracting
1996 from the year and dividing the results by 11. Thus, the transformed
value was 0 for the year 1996 and 1 for the year 2007. The
odds ratios associated with this transformed variable represent
change in the odds of visits in which antipsychotic medication
was prescribed across the entire study period. Analyses were conducted
using STATA, version 11 (StataCorp., College Station, Tex.).