The Study Group for Drug Surveillance in Psychiatry (AMUP) has been working since July 1978 as a task force group of the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Neuropsychopharmakologie und Pharmakopsychiatrie" ...(AGNP). A protocol was designed for the initiation of drug monitoring in psychiatric hospitals. With support of the Bundesgesundheitsamt, Berlin, the first part of this project was started as a practicability study in the psychiatric hospitals of the Universities of Berlin, Göttingen, and Munich and in the municipal hospital of Schleswig. The study includes 7650 in-patients. It is based on the following methods: intensive drug monitoring, organized spontaneous monitoring of adverse drug reactions and registration of drug applications. This drug monitoring system in psychiatry will be expanded to other psychiatric hospitals, and eventually to out-patient clinics as well as private practices within the next two years.
