Brief Motivational Intervention (BMI) on the Deprescription of Benzodiazepines and Related Substances in Adult Chronic Drug Users

In France, the prevalence of use of benzodiazepines (BZDs) and related drugs (Z-drugs: zolpidem, zopiclone) (BZD/Z) was estimated at 13.4% in 2015, and 15% of new users had a first prescription exceeding the legal duration. The increase in prescriptions has continued to grow: in the first 4 months of 2021, an increase of 1.3 million anxiolytic treatments and 580,000 hypnotic treatments was observed, with new prescriptions for these treatments increasing by 15% for anxiolytics and 26% for hypnotics over the same year. The prevalence of long-term (>6 months) BZD prescriptions varies from country to country between 6% and 15% in the general population, and is estimated to reach 22% to 55% in people aged ≥ 65 years. In France, recommendations and good practice guidelines recommend prescriptions limited to 4 weeks for hypnotic BZD/Z and 12 weeks for anxiolytic BZD. However, a recent study focusing solely on anxiolytic BZDs, carried out in patients covered by the general social security system (excluding special schemes such as self-employed workers, farmers, etc.), showed that 12.2% of women and 9.3% of men aged over 50 were prescribed for longer than the legal duration.

All countries agree on the need to limit the length of time these drugs are prescribed because of the rapid inversion of the benefit/risk ratio in the case of prolonged and continuous prescribing (rapid loss of efficacy due to the tolerance effect associated with the occurrence of adverse effects.

A number of public health initiatives have been taken in France to reduce the initiation or continued use of long-term BZD/Z prescriptions, including information for healthcare professionals about the risks, pictograms on drug packaging, directives from the health authorities, incentives offered by the Assurance Maladie and regulatory measures to control prescribing. Alongside these measures, various types of psychosocial intervention are specifically aimed at deprescribing, defined as a clinically supervised process of stopping or reducing the dose of drugs when they cause harm or when the potential risks outweigh the benefits. These strategies have been evaluated for several years, ranging from brief interventions in the form of letters, self-support manuals and targeted consultations, to more complex psychotherapeutic interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) or pharmacological interventions.

Although complex interventions such as structured educational programmes or 3rd wave CBT have been shown to be effective in reducing long-term BZD/Z use, particularly in the elderly, they are often too long and complex to be implemented on a large scale, particularly in primary care, and all the more so in a context of increasing shortage of specialists. Brief interventions, which are both more realistic and functional, have been shown to be effective in reducing and stopping long-term use of BZD/Z at 6 and 12 months post-intervention. At the same time, very few studies have involved the active participation of pharmacy professionals. Yet the involvement of pharmacists would optimise prescribing, and a simple psychoeducation action carried out in pharmacies would have an economic impact. With a view to the shift to ambulatory care centred on the structuring of care pathways, increasing the skills of local pharmacists, as part of a multiprofessional coordination strategy, is a response to the requirements of the law modernising the French healthcare system, while offering a simple and pragmatic intervention model for patients whose prescriptions need to be optimised.

In this study, the investigators propose to evaluate the impact of identification combined with a brief motivational intervention in pharmacies (BMI) targeting the deprescription of BZD/Z in adult patients with long-term prescriptions (≥ 6 months).