Soaring numbers of children in the UK are being prescribed antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs, research has revealed...

Now two studies, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, have found an ever increasing number of prescriptions have been made out to children and young people in recent years.

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Bed-wetting

A second study by researchers at the centre looked at the rise in paediatric antidepressant prescribing to UK children under 18 between 1992 and 2001 using data from the General Practice Research Database.

Almost 25,000 children and adolescents were given 93,000 prescriptions, of which over half (55%) were for the older-style tricyclic antidepressants.

Tricyclics are licensed for the treatment of depression and night time bedwetting. Most of the prescriptions for children under 10 mentioned nocturnal enuresis, and not depression.

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