Antipsychotic Drugs For Children

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Antipsychotic drugs for children will impact future generations. Outlawing illegal drugs is not the issue. It is curtailing the use of legal drugs for children, the frail and the elderly.

Our Problem

We have a problem, the use of the potent antipsychotic drugs has increased more than fivefold from 1993 to 2002 in children and teens. These findings add to earlier studies that showed a sharp rise in the last decade of psychiatric drug prescriptions for children. These include stimulants such as Ritalin and antidepressants.

These findings were published in Archives of General psychiatry, and it is an important debate. Antidepressants have been linked to an increase in suicidal thinking and behavior, and Ritalin may cause or contribute to heart problems. Antipsychotic drugs cause weight gain and blood fat changes that increase the risk of diabetes. Antipsychotics have not been studied extensively for their use in children.

 “We are using these medications and don’t know how they work, if they work, or at what cost.” Said Dr. John March, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Duke University.” “It amounts to a huge experiment with the lives of American Kids, and what it tells us that we’ve got to do something other than what we’re doing now” to access the drugs’overall impact.

With the limited amount of knowledge on how children systems handle these drugs, Dr. Olfsonsaid said “to me the most striking thing was nearly one in five psychiatric visits for young people included a prescription for antipsychotics.”

Are We Producing More Psychotic Offspring?

These drugs are being used for aggression, mood swings, and other behavior problems. Doctors’ are relying on these drugs as an answer to childhood behavior problems. There may be more disrupted children due to environmental issues. However, there are a few questions about the liberal use of these drugs. Boys are more often than girls to be written a prescription for antipsychotics. This may be a shortcut and band aid for behavior problems.

The newer antisychotics are being heavily promoted by the pharmaceutical companies. “The rapid rise of atypical antipsychotic drugs to blockbuster status is troubling. “ said Stefan Kruszewski, former clinical professor of psychiatry at Penn State medical School.  He said  “The drugs were adopted almost as quickly as they came out.”  Atypical antipsychotic drugs were the only other class of drugs besides HIV medicines to be covered under a special pharmaceutical benefits program that facilitated the rapid and incautious rise in the use of new drugs 

The FDA is still examining whether older antipsychotic agents are also associated with higher mortality. Drug companies pay doctors for lectures and other services. Psychiatrist earn more money from drug companies than any specialty doctors. It has been shown that psychiatrists  have prescribed the new class of powerful antipsychotics to children. It is know that these drugs are the most risky for and not approved for children in some cases. The New York Times June 2007 reported this and the fact that the drug companies on average spend twice as much to market drugs as they do researching them.

Antipsychotic drugs are probably the most brain altering. About 90% of the antipsychotics used are: cozapine, risperidone, olazapine, and quetiapine. These are the most commonly prescribed for children, they are not approved for use in this age group. There was a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that showed that youngsters gained from 9.7 to 18.7 pounds after almost 11 weeks of treatment, depending on the type of medication.

“We were able to show all of these agents can cause quite a bit of body weight changes and body composition changes that are not beneficial to health,” said Chistoph Correll, the study’s lead author, in a telephone interview on Oct. 23.

“What we need to figure out is what are the long-term consequences in the lives of children,” Correll, who is a medical director at Zucker Hillside Hospital in New York City’s Queens borough and an associate professor of psychiatry at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.

Our Children’s Future

Antipschotic drugs for children cause Weight gain, obesity and increases in cholesterol in this population. These conditions are linked to their adult risk of cardiovascular problems and cancer. The trade off in profits for both the psychiatrist and pharmaceutical company is the future health of our nation’s children.

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