According to the BBC, the rates of antidepressant prescriptions for children under the age of 16 has quadrupled over the past 10 years. The article also notes that this has not corresponded with an increase in psychological problems for people in that age group. Some politicians are not seeing this as a positive thing.
The drug figures were obtained by David Laws, the Liberal Democrat shadow children’s secretary.
He said: “I think it is a major concern that drugs seem to be prescribed so easily these days to children of school age.
“In the past, not only were there not as many of these types of drugs on the market, there was an assumption, I think, that people would try to get to the source of the problem, rather than simply prescribing drugs.”
I really think that he highlights one of the central questions and philosophical differences in how psychological problems are viewed that will continue to be debated and discussed long after the current era is past.
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5 Comments to
“Antidepressant Prescription Increase for Kids”
I agree that it’s a major concern. It may not have any side effects now, but the long term effects could change things.
That’s true. Those who prescribe antidepressants to children should at least consider the psychological effects it might bring. We don’t want those young patients to suffer other problems aside from their depression.
Sadly, the BBC has misrepresented the figures - which are from a Parliamentary written answer to a question from David Laws MP on 19th July. The figures show that antidepressant prescribing to children rose to a high of 119,566 precriptions in 2002/3 before falling back to 109,535 prescriptions last year. The BBC added these figures to antipsychotics, stimulants and ADHD drugs to arrive at their 631,000 figure, which includes 454,797 prescriptions for ADHD drugs (up from just 48,264 a decade ago) - to run this item as an antidepressant scare story is not only bad journalism, it diverts attention from what looks like a serious issue - why are we prescribing so many ADHD drugs to kids?
In my practice as general physician in INDIA, many children (aged 3yrs and above) frequently have long standing vague symptoms e.g.attacks of pain abdomen without any localising features or any obvious physical disease even after investigations. These children are usually lethargic, have feeding problems with vomiting,have temper tantrums, headache,difficult to wake up in the morning for school. They do very well with long term (3 to 6 months) low dose (10 to 25 mg, depending upon age) tricyclic anti-depressants without any side effects.Obviously these patients could have services of child psychologist but this is unavailable.
Under the circumstances, would one deny anti-depressants to these children?
How can I obtain much info about this topic, except psychcentral.comm?
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 29 Jul 2007
