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Concern has been raised about inappropriate prescribing of psychotropic medication s to children and adolescents, but these criticisms have been based on anecdotal reports, studies of small unrepresentative clinical samples and secondary analyses of large databases on prescription drug use that lacked clinical information, the authors write in the study background. The study by Kathleen R. Merikangas, Ph.D., of the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Md., and colleagues evaluated the prevalence, demographic and clinical correlates, and specificity of classes of psychotropic medications indicated for mental disorders. The study involved 10,123 adolescents (ages 13 to 18 years) who participated in the National Comorbidity Survey Adolescent Supplement between February 2001 and January 2004. Researchers examined mental and neurodevelopmental disorders from the  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition ( DSM-IV ). "Among those with any...

A substantial number of children being treated for ADHD may not have the disorder, while many children who do have the symptoms are going untreated, according to the 10-year Project to Learn about ADHD in Youth (PLAY) study funded by the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention "Childhood ADHD is a major public health problem. Many studies rely on parent reporting of an ADHD diagnosis, which is a function of both the child's access to care in order to be diagnosed, and the parent's perception that there is a problem," said Robert McKeown, of the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health, who led the South Carolina portion of the study. "Further complicating our understanding of the prevalence of ADHD and its treatment is that the diagnosis often is made by a clinician who has little experience assessing and diagnosing mental disorders. As a result, ADHD is both...