The supply of psychotropic drugs in France “remains fragile in the field despite certain improvements,” as for lithium, the drug agency said on Tuesday, which insisted on its “many actions” to allow the continuity of several treatments used in mental health. This observation follows a fourth meeting on June 5, with representatives of health professionals, patients and the drug chain.
Although mental health is “a great national cause” in 2025, about fifteen supply tensions and stocks in psychotropic drugs have been reported by the National Medicine Safety Agency (ANSM) since the beginning of January. After the quetiapine, the neuroleptic often prescribed to treat schizophrenia, bipolarity and certain depressions, supply tensions touched the lithium salts against bipolarity, or current antidepressants, sertraline and venlaxafine.
Deliveries to stop
These supply difficulties began in autumn, Le Monde reports. QUTIAPINE began to get lost in France when the Greek company Pharmathen, producing this molecule for half of the laboratories that sell it in France, ceased its deliveries for several months after the location of a quality defect. As a result, this foul increased the tenthehe application, putting the supplies in tension. In addition, another molecule manufactured by Pharmhen, Venlafaxina, has also seen its manufacture.
For quetiapina, the discount date of the prolonged drug release remained on June 10, “unknown” for doses of 300 and 400 mg, but the coverage of the usual needs in 50 mg was “secured”, according to the ANSM. For Tralithe, in terms of Setaline (Zoloft and Genicerics), laboratories anticipate a delivery available in June, knowing that these forecasts “do not include the time for the provision of patients with pharmacy (3 to 4 weeks),” said the agency, among other things.
Export prohibition
According to the ANSM, many measures have been taken in recent months: prohibition of exports, imports, recipe restrictions, units release, master preparations in pharmacies …
And “substantive work is involved with representatives of health professionals and patient associations to analyze the therapeutic offer in the field of mental health, with the aim of identifying vulnerabilities (diversity of available galler forms, alternatives for indications) and response means,” according to its press release.
The objective is also to take the necessary measures to improve the national offer in psychotropic drugs (conditioning adaptation, identification of new players, diversification of supply chains and operators), the agency added. The shortage of medicines in France has several causes for several years, including relocation and a price setting system sometimes considered insufficiently remunerative by the pharmaceutical industry.
Source: BFM TV
