toledoblade.com --

The percentage of children who take psychiatric drugs is rising, and even though the drugs are a godsend for many children and their families, the trend raises concerns.

Two decades ago, Ritalin was little known to the general public. Today, the commonly prescribed stimulant is a household name because so many children take it. Many adults think of Ritalin as the panacea for attention deficit disorder, but no serious medical professional would make that claim for all cases.

Antidepressants are the other most frequently prescribed drug, according to a study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Researchers found that stimulants and antidepressants were not prescribed more for children in Medicaid or for those in the HMO, but equally in each group. The study also revealed an increased use of anti-psychotic and psychoactive drugs.

At the beginning of the study, 2.5 percent of its participants took at least one psychiatric medication. A decade later, the proportion had more than doubled, to 6.2 percent.

Researchers don't know if it's good or bad that pediatricians and child psychiatrists use more pharmacology. But that they do should cause concern because, even though authorities label the study as the most comprehensive, nobody knows whether psychiatric drugs are over prescribed. There are persistent fears that they are, in part because health insurance firms usually don't want to pay for non-medication treatments such as talk therapies.

It's also discomforting that nobody knows the lasting effects of drugs such as Prozac, which was just approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat 7 to 17-year-olds who suffer from depression. Thus, a Yale School of Medicine professor makes a telling point when he said, "We're doing these experiments more or less with our own children."

Granted, these medical treatments have helped bring some sense of normalcy into the lives of children with severe conditions. Yet could it be that the rise in the use of the drugs is due in part to parents wanting naturally curious and active children to be less rambunctious? Do teachers urge parents to seek to have active children so medicated to make them passive?

Researchers are right to want to learn to precisely which children need certain drugs to function in our society. They also need to know which drugs work best, what the proper doses are, and what are the risks. But the sobering truth is that the only way to do that is to experiment - on children.

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