Thursday, October 09, 2008

Study: Most depressed kids get antidepressants but no therapy - USATODAY.com

Study: Most depressed kids get antidepressants but no therapy - USATODAY.com: At least half of U.S. children who take antidepressants aren't in therapy, a large study suggests, and that delays recovery while greatly increasing the number of kids on the medication who are suicidal.

'Therapy with antidepressants is the standard of care. But is it what's going on in the real world? No,' says Sheila Marcus, child and adolescent psychiatry chief at the University of Michigan Medical School.

The report tracks insurance claims for antidepressants from a database of 6.8 million children and teens from 2002 to 2006. The analysis was done by the health care business of Thomson Reuters, a research firm.