AN APPLE FOR TEACHER AND SOME SOMA FOR JOHNNY:

More kids on anti-psychotic drugs (Lindsey Tanner, 3/17/06, The Associated Press)

Soaring numbers of U.S. children are being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, in many cases for attention-deficit disorder or other behavioral problems for which these medications have not been proved to work, a study found.

The annual number of children prescribed anti-psychotic drugs jumped fivefold between 1995 and 2002, to an estimated 2.5 million, the study said. That is an increase from 8.6 of every 1,000 children in the mid-1990s to nearly 40 of 1,000 in 2002.

More than half the prescriptions were for attention-deficit and other nonpsychotic conditions, the researchers said.

The findings are worrisome "because it looks like these medications are being used for large numbers of children in a setting where we don't know if they work," said Dr. William Cooper, a pediatrician at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital and lead author of the study.