A recent government report suggested seven percent of schoolchildren in the U.S. take medication for behavioral or emotional issues.
"We can't advise parents on what they should do, but I think it's positive that over half of parents reported that medications helped 'a lot," report author LaJeana Howie, a statistical research scientist at the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics told HealthDay.
Eighty-one percent of the children who were on medication for behavioral problems had been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
"Although the authors don't really talk about the diagnoses, ADHD is likely the most overwhelming diagnosis. Oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety and depression are other likely diagnoses," Doctor Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York, in New Hyde Park, told Healthday.
The data also showed that 9.7 percent of boys took these types of medication, compared with 5.2 percent of girls. Older girls were also more likely to be on medications than those who were younger. Race also appeared to have an effect; 9.2 percent of white children took medications for behavioral or emotional issues compared with 7.4 percent of black children and 4.5 of Hispanic children.
"Over the past two decades, the use of medication to treat mental health problems has increased substantially among all school-aged children and in most subgroups of children," LaJeana Howie of the National Center for Health Statistics told NBC.
Other factors could lead to this type of medication use as well.
"There may be parenting challenges, such as more single-parent households, medications may be more available than access to behavioral treatments, there may be more logistical issues with nonpharmaceutical interventions, like getting time off from work," Adesman told HealthDay "Many more families have access to prescription medications than to non-pharmaceutical interventions. There's a lack of mental health treatment parity."
