Fostering Medication Adherence: An Application of Mental Models

Medication non-adherence is a public health issue that stems across therapeutic areas and worsens over time. Research suggests that patients and providers have various mental models or understandings of non-adherence, and that each understanding calls for different interventions. This qualitative analysis identifies ten mental models of medication non-adherence through a critical literature review; and uses semi-structured stakeholder interviews to recommend appropriate mitigation strategies for each mental model. Strategies that tackle more than one mental model are expected to be most effective in reducing non-adherence amongst patients, as they cast a wider net. In the long-term, a screening tool aimed at identifying patients’ mental models could lead to more personalized, targeted, and effective interventions to increase adherence.