Most teens with mental disorders not on meds

By Reuters staff

Despite concerns that too many U.S. young people are using prescription psychiatric drugs, a U.S. study said that just one in seven teens with a mental disorder has been prescribed medication. 

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded the study, said there was no compelling evidence for either misuse or overuse of psychotropic medications, which include stimulants for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), antidepressants and antipsychotics.

"Certain the use of psychiatric medications has been increasing in children and adolescents over the years," said Benedetto Vitiello from the NIH, who worked on the study.

"(But) most of the adolescents who met the criteria for a condition were not receiving medication, which suggests that they were being treated with something else, maybe psychotherapy, or maybe they were not even treated," he added. "This data may suggest that there may be underuse (of psychiatric medications) in some cases."

The findings, which appeared in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, are based on interviews with more than 10,000 teens and their parents, most of whom had at least a high school education and were middle class or above. The interviews were conducted between 2001 and 2004.

Vitiello and his colleagues found 2,350 teens had any type of mental disorder, including anxiety, eating disorders, depression and ADHD.

Just over 14 percent of youth with a mental disorder had been prescribed a psychiatric drug in the past year. That varied by drug and type of disorder: one in five teens with ADHD was recently prescribed stimulants, for example, compared to one in 22 with anxiety who were on an antidepressant.

In youth without signs of a current disorder, 2.5 percent had been prescribed a psychiatric drug recently - most of whom had some signs of distress or a past mental disorder, the researchers said.

The study did not keep track of how many teens were taking drugs they weren't prescribed, such as misusing stimulants as study aids.

Because the interviews were conducted in the early 2000s, the findings may not mirror current trends in prescribing to youth, the researchers warned.

In addition, the report includes a disproportionate number of children from high income families, said David Rubin, from Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, who wrote a commentary on the report.

Children on Medicaid, the government-sponsored health insurance program for the poor, tend to take more psychiatric drugs. That's especially true among the smaller subset of youth in foster care, of whom 12 percent were prescribed antipsychotics in 2007, according to Rubin's past research.

Medicaid enrollees get mental health services for free, but where they can access them, those services are often skewed toward medication instead of talk therapy, Rubin said.

For middle-class youth, insurance co-pays may present more of a barrier to any type of care, including medication.

"The concern regarding the overtreatment versus undertreatment of mental health conditions is really a difficult problem to answer," said Robert Fortuna from the University of Rochester Medical Center.

"It really requires a more nuanced view that we are possibly overprescribing in some situations and missing opportunities to treat in other situations." 

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Comment author avatarchalaco

The healthcare of the mentally ill patients is practically not put in practice because there are not policies that reinforce de treatment for this kind of population.If we do not manage adecuately this group of people we will have to deal with a very difficult type of patients for the rest of their lives.And that would be very costly in many aspects for all of us.

    Reply#1 - Tue Dec 4, 2012 2:25 PM EST
    Comment author avatarWalkWithMeInHell

    I think a lot of teens are not evaluated for meds, is because too many people think the behavior "is normal teen moodiness".

    Looking back, I should have been on medication since 14yo. For the next 20 years, not a single person in my family or outside daily life, nobody even suggested that I had a problem.

    If a teen needs meds, and is not getting treated, then the only ones to blame are their ignorant lazy parents.

    • 1 vote
    Reply#2 - Tue Dec 4, 2012 2:34 PM EST
    Comment author avatartxmom32

    EEK, walk with me in hell....It is very sad that you suffered for so long before treatment but perhaps if you considered the time frame in your life and availability of diagnosis and reasonable treatment you could let go of some angst. Sometimes it helps to look forward and forgive. I can't imagine any parent willingly neglecting their child if issues can be addressed and the method and means available. Fortunately, for many kids today diagnosis is available and treatments are not barbaric.

      #2.1 - Tue Dec 4, 2012 3:56 PM EST
      Comment author avatarWalkWithMeInHell

      Oh I agree, all of the resources for kids are better today. The parents are smarter. The schools have become involved, at least on some level. And the meds are far superior.

      But that's what we all do, try not to make the same glaring mistakes our parents did...

        #2.2 - Tue Dec 4, 2012 4:00 PM EST
        Comment author avatartxmom32

        Absolutely. My best to you and yours in your good hands.

          #2.3 - Wed Dec 5, 2012 9:24 AM EST
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          Comment author avatarAnonymous Economist

          The title made me giggle and think: Most Americans who don't have disorders are on meds.

          • 2 votes
          Reply#3 - Tue Dec 4, 2012 4:32 PM EST
          Comment author avatarRandomPersonOnline

          This is veeerry interesting. I don't know about others, though I do know myself- I've got depression, and I took myself off of my medication. My reason? They were giving me heart problems. to this day, (i'm 16 atm) I have no chance of playing the few sports I like. So yeah... I believe that I count as one of these, being off for... three, four years now? idk. Timekeeping isn't something I do well.

            Reply#4 - Tue Dec 4, 2012 6:08 PM EST
            Comment author avatarMark from Cincinnati

            Nor should they be. Unless those kids are uncontrollably violent or something just look to what you can do with diet. Try feeding them recognizable animal and plant parts instead of processed foods and see how they are.

            • 3 votes
            Reply#5 - Tue Dec 4, 2012 6:23 PM EST
            Comment author avatarJwright771984

            Medication is not always an answer. Some disorders require therapy as well. But the most disturbing thing is that medications are prescribed to people who don't really need them. Despite what big pharma may tell people natural supplements can work just as well if not better than prescription meds and a lot of the natural products have very little if any side effects.

            For example, I have a pretty severe case of OCD. None of the normal medications worked to help alleviate my symptoms. I found a natural supplement called Inositol. I take 18,000mg (18g) a day. This stuff works so much better than any of the medications I have been on. Let me tell you, I am 28 years old now and have been on medications since I was about 12. I would say I have literally been on at least 40 different medications in my life and Inositol blows them all out of the water. Of course they would never mention the natural remedies because then more people would try them and the medical industry would lose money. Greed is the reason this country is in such a mess.

            • 3 votes
            Reply#6 - Wed Dec 5, 2012 2:46 AM EST
            Comment author avatarWilliam-411775

            Why do people think they can fix a thinking problem with medication? You need to address the problem , not mask it as meds do.

            • 4 votes
            Reply#7 - Wed Dec 5, 2012 5:21 AM EST
            Comment author avatarwap3

            Yes they are on meds........

            They eat the chemical soup we call food.

            There are may ingredients that have been shown to cause ALL people issues, but the young and elderly again are the most susceptible to the problems.

            We are what we eat.

            If it has a label don't put it on the table.

              Reply#8 - Wed Dec 5, 2012 8:28 AM EST
              Owner Bat Cave River Cottages Bat Cave NC.Deleted
              Comment author avatarRebecca-1605317

              No. Too many children are on medications already. My 8 year old's teacher told us we should put our son on meds because he won't finish the various worksheets they do in class. Understand that I do not think it is acceptable for my son not to finish his work. He has to bring the work home when he doesn't do it and I make him do it and any assigned homework before he is allowed to do anything else. He gets 100% on all of his tests and understands all of his assignments. The truth is that he is bored. I am not saying he is Einstein or anything, but the work in his class is just too easy for any kid that is slightly intelligent. I have asked for him to have some more challenging work, but the teacher targets most of the work for the average student (which I understand) and she doesn't have much time to develop multiple curriculums. But I told her I will not medicate my son just to get him to stop daydreaming and be a submissive robot. We took his Pokemon cards away and told him he would get them back when he started finishing his assignments. Guess what? Work done almost every day. My kids would have to be violent, extremely disruptive, or failing school for me to consider medications. Why do people think pills are the answer????

                Reply#10 - Wed Dec 5, 2012 11:13 AM EST
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