Children's mental health and the global market: an ecological analysis

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511543678.010

9 - Children's mental health and the global market: an ecological analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 August 2009

Sami Timimi

Edited by

Carl I. Cohen and

Sami Timimi

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Sami Timimi: Affiliation:
Lincolnshire Partnership, NHS Trust Bracebridge Heath, Lincoln, UK, Email: [email protected]
Carl I. Cohen: Affiliation:
SUNY Downstate Medical Center
Sami Timimi: Affiliation:
Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Trust

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Summary

Introduction

Prescriptions of psychotropic medication to children and adolescents have shown a phenomenal increase in most Western countries. For example, the amount of psychotropic medication prescribed to children in the United States increased nearly fourfold between 1985 and 1994 (Pincus et al., 1998). Researchers analyzing prescribing trends in nine countries between 2000 and 2002 found significant rises in the number of prescriptions for psychotropic drugs in children, were evident in all countries – the lowest being in Germany where the increase was 13%, and the highest being in the UK where an increase of 68% was recorded (Wong et al., 2004). Of particular concern is the increase in rates of stimulant prescription to children. By 1996 over 6% of school-aged boys in America were taking stimulant medication (Olfson et al., 2002) with children as young as two being prescribed stimulants in increasing numbers (Zito et al., 2000). Recent surveys show that, in some schools in the United States, over 17% of boys are taking stimulant medication (LeFever et al., 1999) and it is now estimated that about 10% of school boys in the United States take a stimulant (Wallis, 2006). In the UK prescriptions for stimulants have increased from about 6000 in 1994 to over 350,000 children by 2004 (Woolf, 2005), suggesting that we in the UK are rapidly catching up with the USA.

Type: Chapter
Information: Liberatory Psychiatry
Philosophy, Politics and Mental Health
, pp. 163 - 182

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511543678.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2008

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