In January 1992, a little more than one in every 10,000 children aged 11 to 14 was being prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to combat depression, but by December 2001 this figure had jumped to more than three children out of every 1,000.
The findings, from the Centre for Paediatric Pharmacy Research at the University of London, are not surprising as they cover the period when SSRIs, which work by addressing an imbalance of the chemical serotonin in the brain, were being introduced to the market.
Paediatric psychiatrists increasingly turned to SSRIs in the mid-1990s when it emerged that popular tricyclic antidepressants could cause heart problems.
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