Why have Antipsychotic Prescriptions in Children Skyrocketed?

This is another MUST READ

Thanks to aggressive marketing techniques, pharmaceutical companies are raking in profits from atypical antipsychotic medications – drugs originally approved for mental illnesses that are as serious as they are rare.

It's no surprise then that a major portion of the sales of these types of "hard-core" psychiatric drugs come from off-label uses. Drugs such as Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal and Abilify are now increasingly prescribed by psychiatrists and primary-care doctors to treat conditions they were never intended or approved for, such as:
•Anxiety
•Attention-deficit disorder (ADD)
•Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
•Behavioral problems, and
•Insomnia

Illegal Marketing Largely Responsible for Skyrocketing Misuse of Dangerous Antipsychotics in Children


Most of the atypical antipsychotics were approved in the 1990's, at which time they were reserved for a very small minority of serious mental illnesses; primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – diseases afflicting an estimated three percent of Americans. More recently, some atypical antipsychotics have also been approved for the treatment of severe depression. Shockingly, children as young as 18 months are now receiving antipsychotic drugs, despite the fact that the diseases they're designed to treat rarely develop before adolescence.

Drug makers are increasingly getting caught in the act of illegal marketing

Arizona sees surge in DUIs tied to medicine

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/04/08/20100408arizona-dui-medicine-cases.html


The driver was wearing his tennis shoes on the wrong feet, and he could lift his arms only halfway to his chocolate-covered face when officers stopped him at a Tucson fast-food restaurant.

He seemed impaired. Yet there was no alcohol in the 44-year-old's system.


It would take a toxicology test to learn that a cocktail of five different drugs was coursing through the driver, who was later charged with DUI.

In the Tucson case, the stop for erratic driving eventually revealed that the motorist was under the influence of anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants
.

The number of drug-related DUI cases handled by the Arizona Department of Public Safety rose from about 4,400 in 1999 to more than 14,700 last year, an increase of more than 230 percent. The state's population in that period rose about 38 percent.