Study finds psychiatric medications are not overprescribed for kids

Published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, a new study compared prescribing rates for the most common psychiatric disorders in children with prevalence rates. Researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center used data from a national prescription database to examine annual prescriptions for stimulants, antidepressants, and antipsychotics for 6.3 million children and young adults between the ages of 3–24 years. The total annual percentage of prescriptions filled by youth for any of the 3 medication classes was by age: 3–5 years (0.8%), 6–12 years (5.4%), 13–18 years (7.7%), and 19–24 years (6%). Stimulant use was highest for older children at age 11 (5.7%), while antidepressant use tended to increase with age and was highest for adults age 24 (4.8%). During the study years, fewer than 1 in 30 teens received a prescription for antidepressants and 1 in 20 were prescribed stimulants. "At a population level, prescriptions of stimulants and antidepressant medications for children and adolescents do not appear to be prescribed at rates higher than the known rates for psychiatric conditions they are designed to treat," said Ryan Sultan, MD, a child psychiatrist and clinical researcher at Columbia University Medical Center.