ArticleBMC psychiatry2025
Off-label use of psychotropic drugs in youth.
Article in BMC psychiatry, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Thematic mapping of off-label prescription in psychiatry and its implications for bioethics, human rights, and clinical practice: a scoping review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Child and adolescent psychiatry: challenges, solutions, opportunities, and future directions.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2026Article
- Long-Acting Injectable Antipsychotics in Adolescents: From Current Evidence and Gaps to Clinical Practice.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveAssess the prevalence of off-label psychotropic medication use in paediatric and adolescent outpatients, and to identify the most frequently prescribed drugs for various psychiatric conditions.
methodsA cross-sectional study was performed using data from the Norwegian Prescription Database (NorPD) and responses to an electronic survey distributed to child and adolescent psychiatrists across Norway. The NorPD data used in this study was collected from January 1, 2019, through December 31, 2019. The electronic survey was sent out in January 2021 and was active until March 2021.
resultsWe analysed a total of 55,066 prescriptions, and identified that 55% of these were off-label. When medications for hyperkinetic disorders were excluded, the percentage of off-label prescriptions surged to 95%. Medicines for hyperkinetic disorder had the lowest proportion of off-label use (1%), while the medication class with the most off-label use was other agents, e.g. mood stabilising agents and hypnotics and sedatives (100%). The medicines that were most commonly prescribed were methylphenidate for hyperkinetic disorder, quetiapine for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, sertraline for depressive disorder and anxiety/obsessive-compulsive disorder.
conclusionThe off-label usage of psychotropic medications in children and adolescents is prevalent across most psychiatric disorders, with the exception of hyperkinetic disorder. This finding underlines the necessity for ongoing monitoring and assessment of prescription practices, as well as additional research into the safety and efficacy of psychotropic medications in this population.
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