Antipsychotic use in Canadian children and teens is rising dramatically - prescriptions more than doubled in just 4 years, from 2005 to 2009.
That's according to a paper just out from
It's been known for a while that broadly the same is true of the USA. The data reveal that the Canadian border is no barrier to the spread of antipsychotics.
What's surprising is that while in the USA, some of these drugs are officially licensed for use in certain children and adolescent psychiatric disorders, in Canada all such use is off-label. That didn't stop there being nearly 700,000 youth prescriptions for an antipsychotic in 2009, in a country with a total population of 35 million - although bear in mind that this includes multiple prescriptions for the same person.
The growth in antipsychotics is accounted for by the second-generation "atypical" antipsychotics. Risperidone (Risperdal) was the biggest ...
