Family Life

01.15.10 | FL News Team

A new study out today shows the number of young kids taking powerful antipsychotic drugs to treat bipolar disorder has doubled in the last ten years. The study is published in the "Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry." It found that about half of all kids between ages two and five who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder were prescribed an antipsychotic in 2007. It also found about one in every 70 privately insured children in that age group were on some type of psychotropic drug. Columbia University clinical psychiatry professor Mark Olfson, who authored the report, said billing records suggest the doctors in most cases didn't bother to try other intervention methods before prescribing the drugs.

 The report could have implications for the upcoming trial of a Massachusetts couple whose four-year-old daughter died of an overdose of mood-stabilizing drugs in 2006. Prosecutors claim Michael and Carolyn Riley deliberately overmedicated the child to keep her under control. The doctor who put the little girl on blood pressure medication and the antiseizure drug Depakote after diagnosing her with bipolar disorder and ADHD at age two is expected to be a key witness. The doctor has already been cleared of any wrongdoing.