Depression, ADHD, Anxiety Medications Not Overprescribed in Children, Study Shows

Psychiatric medications —especially stimulants and antidepressants—do not appear to be overprescribed to children and adolescents, according to areport published Monday in theJournal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology.“Among young people, the population level prescribing rates as well as age and sex distributions [of children who received stimulant and antidepressant prescriptions] are broadly consistent with known epidemiologic patterns of their established indications for ADHD, anxiety, and depression,” wro te lead author Ryan Sultan, M.D, of Columbia University and colleagues.The researchers analyzed data contained in the 2008 IMS LifeLink LRx Longitudinal Prescription database on U.S. youth aged 3 to 24 years of age who had filled at least one prescription for stimulants, antidepressants, or antipsychotics during the study year. In total, the 2008 IMS LRx database included 131,291 younger children (aged 3 to 5), 2,140,289 older children (6 to 12), 2,163,202 adolescents (13 to 18), and 1,916,700 young adults (19 to 24) who filled at least one stimulant, antidepressant, or antipsychotic prescription.The analysis revealed that 4.6% of older children and 3.8% of adolescents were prescribed stimulants; this is well below published national community ADHD prevalence estimates of 8.6%. Similarly, just 2.8% of adolescents, 1% of older children, and 0.1% of younger children received a prescription for an antidepressant; yet the prevalence rates for depression among...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: child and adolescent mental health disorders child and adolescent psychiatry Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology prescribing prescribing patterns prevalence Source Type: research