Volume 3   Issue  36                        November   2004

                 

Antidepressant Prescriptions for Children Soar, Studies Find

Bloomberg.com By Chantal Brit, November 17, 2004
Children throughout the world are increasingly prescribed antidepressants and other drugs designed to calm or stimulate their brains, according to two studies published in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Researchers found ``significant'' increases of pediatric prescriptions of antidepressants in all the nine countries surveyed between 2000 and 2002, except Canada and Germany. In Germany the increase was 13 percent, the lowest recorded, while the U.K. had the highest with 68 percent, the researchers said.

``We believe the use of psychotropic medications in children is a global public health issue, which should be studied in partnership with pharmaceutical companies, governments and researchers,'' said Ian Wong of the Centre for Pediatric Pharmacy Research at the University of London.

Doctors prescribe antidepressants based on research in adults, as drug makers often haven't studied the safety and effectiveness of these drugs in children. Still, the increasing number of prescription may also be due to better recognition of mental illness in children and the fact that medicines are used instead of other non-drug treatments, the researchers said.

The researchers analyzed information from the international database IMS MIDAS on children and adolescents up to the age of 17 in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. They included antidepressants, stimulants, tranquilizers and medication for psychotic episodes.

A separate study found that antidepressant prescriptions for children under the age of 18 rose by 70 percent between 1992 and 2001 in the U.K. While the rate for older so-called tricylic antidepressants fell 30 percent, prescriptions for newer types of drugs such as Eli Lilly & Co.'s Prozac rose 10-fold to 4.6 children per 1,000.
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