Antidepressant use for kids plummets

[Celebration]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0506220153jun22,1,5375947.story?coll=chi-business-hed

Concerned about a steep drop in antidepressant prescriptions to children, the American Medical Association Tuesday said it will ask the Food and Drug Administration to track the results of its decision to add stiff warnings on the drugs' use for non-adults.

The AMA stopped short of opposing the FDA's decision last fall to add its so-called "black box," warning on antidepressants when they are used for children and adolescents. The new label warns of increased "suicidal thinking and behavior" in children and adolescents being treated with the drugs.

The AMA, after research by members and its own staff, issued a 33-page report at the group's annual meeting this week in Chicago. The AMA's 543-member policymaking House of Delegates on Tuesday then approved a measure that would urge the FDA to evaluate the warning's impact on treatment patterns, patient compliance and patient access to the drugs. The measure said that antidepressants "can be helpful in pediatric patients," but that "longer term studies are needed to better address safety and efficacy concerns."

.............snip....................

Since the FDA began reviewing widely prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and Celexa, antidepressant usage is down more than 10 percent among patients under age 18, according to a study by pharmacy benefit firm Medco Health Solutions Inc. The pharmacy benefit company found usage down 16 percent for the same age group in the fourth quarter, "traditionally the time of the year when antidepressant use peaks," the study said.

[FloridaPat]

1. Maybe the parents needed the pills more living under a * presidency.

Or maybe the parents found out their kids weren't really depressed. Or they all lost their health care insurance and couldn't afford the $5 pills.

[Warpy]

2. It's a combination of the latter plus panic that their children

might be one of the tiny minority who get worse on the medication and try to kill themselves.

[HuckleB]

3. I'm a Pediatric Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner.

And a ten percent drop is not "a steep drop" in my opinion.

[Celebration]

4. It is a drop

for the pharmaceutical company bottom line. The whole point of adding the warnings was to make physicians aware of possible horrific consequences (very low probability) to weigh against the possible good that they could do. It only makes sense that fewer prescriptions would be written after the warning was added.

So I am not sure what the beef is here. I am very suspicious that some pharmaceutical companies are trying to spin this result into being a negative thing.

Overall I would agree that we all might be a little distressed about the direction of the country, but if parents were stealing their kids' antidepressants (haha) I don't think the statistics would necessarily show that. It would still be under the kid's name.

Could more people be ordering them from Canada?

OTOH, I haven't heard of many mass school killings in the past couple of years. Maybe they are keeping these medications out of the wrong hands.

[HuckleB]

5. More than a few of my patients order their Rx's from Canada.