Medicating America's Children

There is growing concern about the increased prescribing of psychotropic medication in the child and adolescent population. A very recent study new study from Rutgers University and Columbia University shows that prescriptions for antipsychotic medications to children aged 2 to 5 years doubled between the years 1999-2001 and 2007. The top-selling medicines in 2008 were anti-psychotics for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with $14.6 billion in sales. .198 The studied group was a population of privately insured children. Moreover, the age of children being medicated with psychotropic drugs is getting younger and the number of children being medicated increasing every year. These same researchers produced a previous study in a population of children enrolled in a government Medicaid program.199 They concluded that children seen by physicians insured under Medicaid are about four times as likely to be prescribed an anti-psychotic medication.