Psychotropic medication use in French children and adolescents

Abstract Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe the patterns of psychotropic drug use in a large representative population of children and adolescents drawn from the French National Health Insurance databank. Methods: Data were drawn from a sample of 1% of the beneficiaries of the French national health insurance, selecting those 0–17 years old in 2010 (n=128,298). In addition to age and gender, data included the identification number of each drug allowing a European Pharmaceutical Marketing Research Association (EphMRA) classification, as well as the type of the prescriber. Results: Overall, 2.5% of children and adolescents had been prescribed psychotropic medication. A majority were prescribed anxiolytics (1.9%), followed by antidepressants (0.3%), antipsychotics (0.3%), and stimulants (0.2%). Between the ages of 15 and 17, 6.1% of girls were prescribed anxiolytics and 1.1% were prescribed antidepressants. For boys, the anxiolytics remained the most prescribed psychotropic medication; howe...