Geographic Trends in Pediatric Psychotropic Medication Dispensing Before and After the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Greta Bushnell1, Jenny W Sun1, Susan dosReis1
1Rutgers Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science, Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, New Brunswick, New Jersey (Bushnell, Gerhard, Horton); Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Rutgers School of Public Health, Piscataway, New Jersey (Bushnell, Gerhard, Horton); Safety Surveillance Research, Pfizer, New York City (Sun); Department of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Baltimore (dosReis, Camelo Castillo, Lee); Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora (Czaja); Department of Medical and Clinical Pharmacology, Center of Pharmacovigilance and Pharmacoepidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, Toulouse University Hospital, Toulouse, France (Durrieu); Center of Clinical Investigations, Inserm CIC1426, Robert Debré Hospital, Paris Cité University-National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Paris (Kaguelidou); School of Nursing-Camden, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Camden (Pudasainee-Kapri); Department of Population Health Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina (Raman); GlaxoSmithKline, Rockville, Maryland (Spence).
Objective:
This study examined trends and geographic variability in dispensing of prescription psychotropic medications to U.S. youths before and after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods:
Using national data on prescription medication dispensing, the authors performed a cross-sectional study examining the monthly percent change in psychotropic medications dispensed (total N=95,639,975) to youths (ages 5-18 years) in 2020 versus 2019, across medication classes and geographic regions.
Results:
For many medications, more were dispensed in March 2020 than in March 2019 and fewer in April-May 2020 versus April-May 2019. Stimulants had the largest decline: -26.4% in May 2020 versus May 2019. The magnitude of the monthly percent change varied by region.
Conclusions:
Fewer psychotropic medications were dispensed to U.S. youths after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with 2019. Although some medication classes rebounded to prepandemic dispensing levels by September 2020, dispensing varied by class and region.
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