Online CPR Certification Blog
Overusing Psychiatric Drugs
Date: February 1st, 2013
There are many teens with mental disorders. Sadly, they are not on medication for one reason or another.
In a report published by Reuters on December 3 2012, research shows that a big number of teens in the US is on prescription psychotic drugs but that one out of every seven teens on psychotropic medication is not on medication or at least misses on their medication form time to time. The category of the psychotropic drugs consists of many types of drugs. Some of them are for ADHD, antidepressants and so forth. A recent study carried out showed that more than 14 percent of teenagers in the US had been put on one or other prescription drug, depending on the nature of their disorder.
Need for proper medication should be opened up for discussion
The most important thing here is to make sure that a discussion is opened up in regard to the need for medication for teens that may be facing or already wallowing in mental disorders. According to various, reports filed under different researchers, they show that the African American teens are more likely to be put on antidepressant drugs. They will also be likely put on other types of drugs depending on the nature of the mental disorder that they are suffering from.
If they are put on Medicaid, they will be more likely to go for their mental disorder prescriptions. Therefore, this indicates that may be the cost is a big hindrance for teenagers in the US who would like to get proper medication. As the study carried out by National Institutes of Health indicated, most teens that were under Medicaid were not likely to miss their medication. Therefore, they would be likely to get better faster because keeping on their medication consistently would ensure that they get better faster. Even though the research on how teens diagnosed with mental disorders keep on their mental disorder prescriptions was carried out in the early 2000s, there is the reason to believe that the same statistics would still apply today.
Number of teenagers put on medication for mental disorders on the rise
It is appalling that in the US, the number of teens who have been put on medication for mental disorders keeps rising every year. However, even sadder is that most of the teens do not adhere to their medication, or they miss it altogether. This is a major cause of concern, and the sad thing is that studies that are more current will reveal more numbers.
One other cause of fear is that too many of the kids whose families are on the Medicaid program for the poor end up taking too many psychiatric drugs even when such are not needed. It was found that instead of being given talk therapy, this form of treatment was discarded and instead, it was turned into mediation, which was not really needed. So even if your teen is on psychiatric medication, you should enquire whether that is right in his or her situation.
While no one can exactly say what the main causes of mental disorders in teens are there is a good reason to believe that most of the disorders can be treated fast if the kids are put under the right medication. Here, over prescription and misuse of the psychiatric is the main fear. Are the teens with mental disorder getting more medication than they should?