Incident Psychotropic Medication Use Among US Commercially Insured Children and Adolescents from 2019 to 2022

To compare the proportion of children and adolescents with incident psychotropic medication use from 2019 through 2022. This cross-sectional study used the IQVIA PharMetrics^® Plus for Academics health plan claims database. Our study sample consisted of children and adolescents ages 6-18 who had at least one psychotropic medication in March 2019-February 2022. We examined psychotropic medication use in three distinct study periods: pre-pandemic (March 2019 to February 2020), pandemic-year-1 (March 2020-February 2021), and pandemic-year-2 (March 2021-February 2022). Incident use was defined as no evidence of psychotropic medication in the 12 months preceding the child and adolescent's first psychotropic dispensing in each study period. We estimated incident psychotropic use in the three study periods. Average marginal effects tested for significant differences in psychotropic initiation, overall and stratified by age and sex. In our sample of 42,346 children and adolescents who were dispensed any psychotropic medication during the study period, incident psychotropic users were 27.8% in pre-pandemic, 26.0% in pandemic-year-1, and 27.8% in pandemic-year-2. Incident use of antidepressants was 51.4% in pandemic-year-1 and 54.6% in pandemic-year-2. The probability of incident psychotropic use was 2.4% lower in pandemic-year-1 than in the pre-pandemic year (p < 0.001). The proportion of 6-11-year-olds and females initiating a psychotropic was higher in pandemic-year-2 than pre-pandemic. Incident psychotropic use was most notable in younger and female children 2 years after the pandemic onset.