Bureau Recommends: Soaring anti-psychotic use in children – a ‘slow fuse to disaster’

The long-term effects of anti-psychotics are ‘unknown’, says report.

Up to 15,000 children – double the figure of 10 years ago – were prescribed powerful antipsychotic drugs in the UK last year, an investigation by Channel 4 News has found.

The drugs are intended for patients with serious mental conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and psychosis.

But experts believe that the drugs, prescribed by GPs to children as young as five, are increasingly used to control behaviour.

Professor Tim Kendall, who has been asked to write the first ever guidance on prescribing anti-psychotics to young people with serious mental illness, told Channel 4 News:

‘As far as I am aware there is no evidence that there has been a doubling in the rate of psychosis. So if there is a doubling in the rate of children being given anti-psychotics, that is a worry,’ Prof Kendall said.

‘My worry is that these drugs are being used for other purposes.’

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Channel 4 News spoke with families whose children have been given anti-psychotics for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism.

The parents of a boy prescribed anti-psychotics for three years for ‘challenging behaviour’ said that the drugs had ‘no benefit at all’.

Despite concerns over potentially dangerous side effects, the investigation found that children are being left on the drugs for years at a time, and are not being properly monitored.

Professor Peter Tyrer, from Imperial College in London, told Channel 4 News that unchecked use of the medication is a ‘slow fuse to disaster’.

‘This is particularly alarming because of course children have got their whole lives ahead of them,’ he said.

Read the full story here.