Why are some people offered depot injections?

Professor David Taylor: 2 reasons and they are kind of different ends of the spectrum really.

Some patients say they prefer to have a depot every 2 weeks or a month than have to remember to take tablets everyday. So it’s easier for them to go to a clinic on the same day every month to have an injection than to remember to take a series of tablets, perhaps once, twice, or three times a day sometimes, for that month.

Other people are people who are known not to take tablets reliably every day, either because they are forgetful, or because they are disorganised in some way, or because they deliberately don’t want to take the medication as prescribed. In those cases, the depot is given in an attempt to make sure that the patient gets the prescribed amount of medication. Now, of course a patient could not turn up for their injection, and then they won’t be given the injection, but the advantage there is that if a patient doesn’t turn up, the healthcare workers are aware that the patient hasn’t attended and that they haven’t had their medication. Whereas if they are left taking oral medication, they can, without anybody knowing, stop taking that, and nobody will intervene to make things better.