“Tens of thousands of children” subject to depressive episodes or mood disorders consume psychotropic drugs, reveals a report from the High Council for Family, Childhood and Age (HCFEA), unveiled by Le Parisien this Monday: antipsychotics, antidepressants or even anxiolytics, most of these treatments are only indicated for adults in France. But in the absence of alternatives, more and more doctors are also prescribing them for children. The HCFEA, an establishment placed under the Prime Minister, is sounding the alarm.
“We thought that, in France, we traditionally prescribed little to children, but the figures have doubled between 2010 and 2021, and this places us among the most prescribing countries in Europe”, explains Sylviane Giampino, president of the Council of the childhood and adolescence of the HCFEA.
According to figures from Cnam and ANSM, between 2014 and 2021, antipsychotic prescriptions for children jumped by 48.54%, while those of antidepressants jumped by 62.58%, those of psychostimulants by 78.07% and those of hypnotics and sedatives by 155.48%. The psychotropic drugs most prescribed to children remain hypnotics and anxiolytics: these would now be consumed by 2.72% of the French population aged 6 to 17, compared to 2.01% ten years ago.
However, 40% of the prescriptions of psychotropic drugs made to children by city doctors relate to treatments normally reserved for adults. In the hospital, this is even the case for 67% to 94% of prescriptions, the report says. “We do not question the usefulness of these drugs or their prescription, but we are for a rebalancing and alert to the lack of other forms of help and care provided”, specifies Sylviane Giampino, who recalls that as as drug prescriptions increase, the resources allocated to child psychiatry decrease.
Especially since these drugs, points out Marie-Rose Moro, child psychiatrist at the Maison de Solenn, “often have significant side effects”: drowsiness, apathy, emotional and behavioral disturbance. Some, says the child psychiatrist, are simply “not very suitable for the child’s brain”.
