Psychiatric Drug Use on the Rise

Psychiatric drug prescriptions have soared amongst Americans, with 73 percent more adults and 50 percent more children using such drugs in 2006 compared to a decade earlier.

Seniors citizen prescriptions have doubled in the same time period.

The researchers, Sherry Glied and Richard Frank, attribute the increase in prescriptions to primary care doctors becoming more familiar with psychotropic medications, not to a trend in over-prescribing medications for concerns that in the past would have been treated by other methods (or simply left untreated).

The researchers also suggest that lower-cost drugs have become more widely available and that their data reflects an overall trend in improved access to mental health care.

“Greater availability of medications to treat conditions like Alzheimer’s and increased access to prescription drugs through the Medicare Modernization Act may have also played a role in doctors’ prescribing drugs to seniors,” said Sherry Glied, Professor and Chair of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, at Columbia University.

The researchers examined national prescribing data from 1996 to 2006.

Rather than a trend toward overprescribing, this trend reflects improved access as more insurance companies are offering mental health services and more psychiatrists are accepting health insurance, according to the authors.

Children’s access has grown through the expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The number of children diagnosed and treated for mental health conditions during primary care visits doubled between 1996 and 2006.

In addition, more people with serious mental illnesses are imprisoned or incarcerated. The authors estimate that 7 percent of people with persistent mental illnesses are put in jail or prison every year.

In a related study, Richard Frank, Professor of Health Economics at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues found that mental health care spending grew 17 percent from 2001 to 2003, exceeding historical averages, which the authors attribute to increased spending on new prescription drugs.

Source: Health Affairs

Don’t toy with children’s health – Parents told

Mr. Justice Quansah, Project Co-ordinator of Compassion International (CI), a Non-Governmental Organization, has advised parents and guardians of beneficiary children of the child development project being implemented by the NGO to take good care of the diets of their children.

He said parents could use vegetables and other locally-produced items to prepare balanced diets for their children instead of relying on imported ingredients.

Mr. Quansah was addressing parents and guardians of beneficiary children at an orientation course at Kasoa Pentecost Child Development Centre.

He disclosed that over 200 children have been registered under the Compassion International Child Development Project since it commenced work in the area.

Mr. Mark Zutah, project health worker, reminded participants that it was only when their children were properly fed that they could absorb what their teachers impart to them.

He said whereas the NGO and the Church were doing their best to promote the spiritual and educational well-being of the children, parents and guardians of the beneficiary children must also play their part to protect their good health.

Mr. Patrick Ozor and Mr. Francis Donkor, both workers of the project, stressed the need for participants to adopt prudent financial measures in whatever business they pursue to ensure maximum returns to supplement what the NGO is providing for their children’s development.

Earlier, Mr. J. Y. Owusu-Kwarteng, Public Relations Officer of the Awutu Effutu Senya Mutual Health Insurance Scheme (AESMHIS) had taken participants through the various aspects of the health insurance policy.

Mr. Owusu-Kwarteng reminded Ghanaians who have not as yet registered with the Scheme of the need to avail themselves of the immense benefits the policy provides, and counselled such people not to waste anymore time to register with the Scheme.

He also urged all premium holders of the Scheme to ensure that their Health Insurance ID Cards were renewed in good time to avoid embarrassments during critical times.

Parenting and the high cost of autism

education, a release to adulthood. When upon this cycle is added the filter of autism, those concerns and costs easily balloon, sometimes to unmanageable levels.

Today 1 in 150 children is diagnosed with autism, with a new case diagnosed every 20 minutes and is the fastest-growing developmental disability in the United States. Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction, problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, and unusual, repetitive, or limited activities and interests.

Because autism is a neurological condition and can be triggered by multiple factors, there is neither single cause nor single therapeutic treatment for improving the lives of those with ASD. Rather, there are multiple options, various possibilities that – based on the severity of the individual’s autism – may have differing results. One thing is clear, early identification and intervention is a key component in affording a better opportunity for mainstreaming into general society. This education and these therapies, however, are often times quite costly, sometimes ruinously so.

Children, ages 5 to 11, who attend the Brooklyn Autism Center Academy which offers intensive educational instruction as one example have an annual tuition of $85,000 per year. Individual therapists can easily run $100-200 or more per hour, with a child’s needs easily requiring dozens of hours a week in therapy. While there is a general tide – slowly turning – for health insurance companies to cover some of these costs, there is no universal coverage across every state in the country, and many therapies are not covered at all. Families are often forced to choose between financial stability and going out of pocket for treating their child. It is not uncommon in this cycle for families to dig themselves into debt, sell their assets, and in some cases be forced into foreclosure or bankruptcy over the medical costs incurred in seeking to better their autistic child’s circumstances.

The costs for a child with autism only continue on as that child grows into an adult, as more social services are required for that person over his or her lifetime. According to a Harvard School of Public Health study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine in the spring of 2007, the typical American spends about $317,000 over his or her lifetime in direct medical costs, incurring 60% of those costs after age 65 years. In contrast, people with autism incur about $306,000 in additional direct medical costs, implying that people with autism spend twice as much as the typical American over their lifetimes and spend 60% of those incremental direct medical costs after age 21 years. The societal costs to support a single person with autism is $3.2 million over his or her lifetime, and as a group, upwards of $35 billion each year in direct (both medical and nonmedical) and indirect costs to care for all individuals diagnosed with ASD.

There are organizations, such as Easter Seals, that provide a variety of services and programs to help defray some of these costs, as well as new organizations such as Aid for Autistic Children Foundation, Inc. that seek to help those families who are in financial distress from helping their children. More such programs need to be created and supported to aid not only those with autism but the families that are bearing the financial burden of guiding these children into adulthood.