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Potent psychotropic drugs used to control hallucinations and delusions are being prescribed more frequently to children in the UK, a trend that has experts concerned about safety and appropriateness.
Researchers at the University of Manchester, who looked at prescribing trends in selected GP practices in England, said the proportion of adolescents in England receiving antipsychotic drug prescriptions had doubled over the past two decades, raising questions about the potential long-term effects of the drugs concerns.
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Although the overall percentage is relatively small, the increased use of antipsychotic medications is concerning given that their safety in children and adolescents has not been established, the researchers said. Haloperidol and chlorpromazine are prescribed antipsychotics.
“We don’t think changes in prescribing are necessarily linked to changes in clinical needs,” said Mathias Peirce, a senior research fellow at the University of Manchester’s Center for Women’s Mental Health and one of the study’s authors. “It may be more likely to reflect changes in clinicians’ prescribing practices.”
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Antipsychotic drugs are commonly used in adults to treat mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, but may be associated with side effects such as sexual dysfunction, infertility and weight gain leading to diabetes.
Among the 7.2 million children and adolescents in the study sample, almost twice as many boys as girls received an antipsychotic prescription each year during the study period from 2000 to 2019. Girls are most likely to have an eating disorder, while boys are more likely to have ADHD, according to research published in The Lancet Psychiatry.
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