Study shows soaring use of psychiatric drugs.
Julie Magno Zito, a pharmacologist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore and the lead researcher of the study, found that between 1 percent and 1.5 percent of preschoolers in two state Medicaid programs and in one regional HMO were getting these medications, known as psychotropics. Ritalin, and most of the drugs in the study are, therefore, being prescribed off-label, meaning that they weren t originally approved for that use but, according to Food and Drug Administration guidelines, may still be prescribed with caution. There were hints, even before this study, that psychotropic drug use in young children was on the rise. Zito and her colleagues cited in the article a 1994 report revealing that 3,000 prescriptions for Prozac had been written for children under the age of 1. In 1995, roughly 12 out of every 1,000 young children in the Midwestern state Medicaid program was getting stimulants a threefold increase from 1991.