Too many children are being given anti-psychotic drugs to alter behavior, according to this research. What the article does not point out is that roughly four times as many boys as girls receive these drugs.
From the article:
Soaring numbers of children are being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs -- in many cases, for attention deficit disorder or other behavioral problems for which these medications have not been proven to work, a study found. The annual number of children prescribed anti-psychotic drugs jumped fivefold between 1995 and 2002, to an estimated 2.5 million, the study said. That is an increase from 8.6 out of every 1,000 children in the mid-1990s to nearly 40 out of 1,000. But more than half of the prescriptions were for attention deficit and other non-psychotic conditions, the researchers said. The findings are worrisome "because it looks like these medications are being used for large numbers of children in a setting where we don't know if they work," said lead author Dr. William Cooper, a pediatrician at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital
.