So Are Psych Meds Over or Under-Prescribed?

Ten percent of all visits by teen males to a doctor wind up with said teen males going home with a prescription for a psych med. So says a study by Brandeis University professor Cindy Parks Thomas, who tracks prescription drug trends. That so many youngsters are running around with juju in their brains is something I've long argued. Nice to see some data to go with my hunch. The percentage is teen males lines up with Andrew Solomon's claim in The Noonday Demon that 10 percent of Americans take an anti-depressant, and claims by researchers that about 30 percent of doctor's visits by women result in discussions of psych meds, and, almost as often, a prescription.

These kinds of numbers support my basic contention that 15 to 20 percent of the country is on a psych med of some kind. Given the overall half-performance of these same meds, that's like saying as much as 10 percent of the public is being ripped off. Why aren't more people fundamentally bothered by this? Or are we all scared to ask the necessary questions?

In a careful way, Thomas asks the implied question: "The dramatic increase in prescribing of psychotropic medications is of considerable concern, particularly because these medications are not without risks." Nice to have an academic echo my thoughts.

Also, Thomas asserts in the study that all that prescribing amounted to a 250 percent increase in psych meds for teens between 1994 and 2001. What's more, the largest portion of that increase occurred after the FDA, in 1999, allowed pharma companies to advertise directly to consumers. Meanwhile, other prescriptions for teen males--antibiotics, etc.--went down over the same time period, principally because of public health warnings cautioning against over-reliance on antibiotics and the like. Hmmm. I don't believe black helicopters can fly, but I hear one warming up right now.

From available accounts of the study (halted in my tracks once again by pay-to-read academic journals!), Thomas doesn't get into whether these were anti-depressants, antipsychotics, ADD meds or mood stabilizers. It'd be nice to see which meds drove this trend among teens. My hunch is it was anti-depressants initially and, when those tapered off, ADD meds and atypical antipsychotics. Thomas claims that a diagnosis of ADHD resulted from one-third of the office visits. Most striking is that as many as 26 percent of the office visits that led to a psych med being prescribed did not have an associated mental health diagnosis.

So these kids are getting prescribed all these drugs for what reasons? They are getting what results?