Posted on 02/02/2005 4:11:20 PM PST by neverdem
Sharp Decrease Seen After Reports of Risks
The number of American children taking antidepressant drugs fell sharply last year, after months of controversy over evidence that the medications increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior among some children.
The steep decline among children is a dramatic reversal of a decade-long trend of soaring prescription rates for drugs such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, and the pattern of the data suggests the numbers could fall even further.
Activists who had urged the Food and Drug Administration to require a black-box warning about the risks of the drugs said the drop reflects the better decisions that parents and physicians are making after being warned about the medications.
But medical groups such as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry warned that the government had unwittingly unleashed an uncontrolled experiment that would cause many depressed children to go without treatment and ultimately lead to more suicides.
The turnaround in prescription trends was reported yesterday by Medco, which manages drug benefits for about 60 million Americans.
Various studies have shown a three- to tenfold rise in the use of antidepressants among children between 1987 and 1996, and an additional spike of 50 percent between 1998 and 2002. There was a further increase of about 9 percent between 2002 and 2003, but the new data revealed a 10 percent decline last year, said Robert Epstein, chief medical officer at Medco.
The decline was gradual at the start of the year but gathered momentum, Epstein said. While the raw data do not indicate why fewer children were getting medications, Epstein said the fall coincided with FDA warnings last year that culminated in October with a requirement that antidepressant manufacturers place the black-box label on their drugs.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
great news
Good.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Elimination of sugar and eating protein for breakfast can do a lot toward eliminating teen depression. A few tablespoons of Cod Liver Oil works for some people. Toxic chemicals should be a last resort and should be closely followed. 24 hours can make a huge difference.
Since there aren't that many child psychiatrists around, I would assume most of the drop in prescription are from pediatrician and family physicians.
Who are they trying to kid? THEY'RE the ones whose experimentation has created drug-made automatons.
The tort system has its advantages.
Agreed. What also helps is lots of exposure to sunlight, and replacing sugar wtih complex carbs (whole grains.)
If you ask me, "fewer kids" is not good enough...no kids should be prescribing drugs for depression, not unless they are child prodigies who have already completed medical school.
Interesting that they gathered data on number of prescriptions but don't seem motivated to look at suicide rates. Have they fallen, along with the decrease in meds? Have they risen, suggesting that some kids are going without help they need?
Medco has a readily available, computerized database. The CDC has to wait to get the data from all the health departments from all over the country which start out as death certificates. That's manual data entry unless they have optical readers to do it.
I hadn't considered that. I shouldn't be so suspicious. Thanks!
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