[Psychotropic consumption among school-aged children: a Buenos Aires city exploratory survey]

Overmedication of children has been reported in our country. Our objective was to evaluate the rate of consumption of psychotropics in school-aged children of Buenos Aires city.

Parents of school-aged children of 6 schools of Buenos Aires city (2 public and 4 privates) were surveyed.

Rate of response was only 28,5% (n = 358). Three percent of the children (mean age = 9 years old) had taken a psychotropic the previous month, 5% along their lifetime. Boys were more medicated tan girls (5% vs. 1,3%). A percentage of 8,2% was under psychotherapeutic treatment, 7,6% had treatment with an educational psychologist and 7% with a speech therapist. In all the cases the drug was prescribed by a physician. Only in 20% of the cases was prescribed by a neurologist. In 70% of the cases it was prescribed by a psychiatrist. All the parents whose children were medicated knew the diagnosis of their kids and thought that the drug had improved their condition.

In spite of the important limitations of this study due to the low response rate, we could not notice an excessive prescription of psychotropics in this sample of Buenos Aires children compared with other countries. Further research is needed to confirm these results.