Double Dosing Our Kids

U.S. children diagnosed with behavior and psychiatric problems increasingly receive more than one medication despite very little proof that many of the drugs are safe or effective for kids, suggests a research review out Monday.

"We don't know how these drugs may interact with each other, and we don't even have safety studies in children for many of the drugs on their own," says child psychiatrist Joseph Penn of Brown University Medical School and Bradley Hospital in Providence.
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One drug often causes side effects; since more medications than ever are available, kids get another drug to deal with these side effects. For example, stimulants may cause insomnia, which leads to prescribing sleeping pills.
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"Doctors are doing this polypharmacy stuff all the time with kids," says Penn, "but when you look for the research, there is none."

— By Marilyn Elias, "More kids get multiple psychiatric drugs," August 3, 2005, USA TODAY