Strong psychiatric drugs used to control hallucinations and delusions are being prescribed more often for children in the UK, a trend that has experts concerned about safety and appropriateness.
(Bloomberg) — Strong psychiatric drugs used to control hallucinations and delusions are being prescribed more often for children in the UK, a trend that has experts concerned about safety and appropriateness.
The proportion of youngsters being prescribed antipsychotics in England has doubled over the past two decades, raising concerns about the potential long-term effects of such medications, according to University of Manchester researchers who examined prescribing trends at selected general practices in England.
While the overall percentage is relatively small, the increasing use of antipsychotics is a cause for concern given that their safety in children and adolescents has not been established, according to the researchers. Haloperidol and chlorpromazine were among the antipsychotics that were prescribed.
“We do not think the changes in prescribing necessarily relate to changes in clinical need,” said Matthias Pierce, senior research fellow at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Women’s Mental Health and one of the authors of the study. “It may be more likely to reflect changes in prescribing practice by clinicians.”
Antipsychotic drugs are often used in adults to treat mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, but can be linked with side effects like sexual dysfunction, infertility and weight gain leading to diabetes.
Among the 7.2 million children and adolescents in the study sample, twice as many boys received antipsychotic prescriptions as girls for almost every year during the 2000-2019 study period. Girls were most likely to have eating disorders, while boys were more likely to have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to the study published in the Lancet Psychiatry.
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