Biederman would be proud:

Biederman J, Mick E, Hammerness P, Harpold T, Aleardi M, Dougherty M, Wozniak J. Open-label, 8-week trial of olanzapine and risperidone for the treatment of bipolar disorder in preschool-age children. Biol Psychiatry. 2005 Oct 1;58(7):589-94.

BTW: NO funding disclosure/conflict of interest statement in this article.

That's absolutely disgusting. There is absolutely no clinical indication or evidence to support this practice. Just disgusting.

Antidepressants in babies - staggering! I hope some of these were just mistakes i.e. busy doctor seeing Mum and baby together accidentally writes Mum's antidepressant prescription while in baby's file on the computer - it prints out with baby's name on it, no one notices until it gets to the pharmacy, and the pharmacist justs smiles and puts the script through. That's the most (only?) reasonable explanation I can come up with.

Babies??? WTF???

Sherry,

Well said. But I would have said the actual F word.....

I hope all is well in the land of Ducks....

The Australian numbers cover kids in that nation's public health insurance program, so there's a good possibility that even more children are getting anti-depressants under private insurance schemes.

Unlikely. Most of australia is covered under public health insurance, so I'd doubt there would be more than say, 1000 babies doing this idiotic thing in private health care.

The sad thing about this is the Federal Health Minister is approving the funding of this outrageous epidemic. I approached her 6 months ago and she replied in August advising she refused to apply the age restrictions to the PBS schedule established to fund and promote these drugs to the doctors and parents. Today she comments to the Australian she is looking into the matter but has forgotten she wrote to me confirming she has no intention of doing anything, she is either a very good liar or has a very bad memory. This prescription epidemic could not have occured if the Govt had not supported it, they failed to regulate failed to enforce the appropriate laws and put thousands of children and now babies lives at risk it is an absolute disgrace.

thank-you phil ---God Bless--

Thank you Phil-xoxoxoxo

ya know-I have 2 Extended family members who
were put on anti-depressants -one for bed wetting-the GP didn’t even tell the parents that it was an anti-depressant-he was 7 and was on the meds for 4 years -the other young yin was put on Prozac at the age of 8 for OCD -the OCD started after he was sexually abused -he got fucting drugs no therapy-heart breaking for me too watch-

.Both were scripted many years ago-about 12 years ago-its not a new thing-Iam just so damm happy that its in the media-blogs etc-so thank-you again. - Iam in NZ-