Sammendrag
Antipsychotic drugs are used increasingly by children and adolescents and there is concern about offlabel
use. We aimed to study which substances, and for which mental disorder diagnoses,
antipsychotic drugs were prescribed to 0–18-year-old boys and girls in Norway. Linked data from
the national health registry for prescription drugs in 2010 and mental disorder diagnoses in 2008–2012
were used to study the prevalence of antipsychotic drug use, the type of antipsychotic drug
substances used, mental disorder diagnoses in users and distribution of drugs per diagnostic category
across gender. In total, 0.18% of Norwegian children and adolescents were prescribed antipsychotic
drugs during 2010, of which there were more boys (0.23%) than girls (0.13%). Risperidone was the
most frequently used substance among boys (57.4%) and girls (32.3%), followed by aripiprazole
(19.4%) in boys and quetiapine (27.4%) in girls. The most common mental disorder diagnoses among
male users were hyperkinetic (49.9%) and autism spectrum disorder (27.1%), while anxiety disorders
(41.5%) and depressive illness (33.6%) were most common among female users. A schizophrenia-like
psychosis diagnosis was given to 11.1% of the male and 18.2% of the female users. A hyperkinetic
disorder was diagnosed among 56.9% and 52.4% of the male risperidone and aripiprazole users,
respectively. Among female quetiapine users, 57.1% were diagnosed with anxiety disorders and 52.4%
with depressive illness. These results demonstrate that children and adolescents who use
antipsychotic drugs are predominantly diagnosed with non-psychotic mental disorders such as
hyperkinetic disorder among boys and anxiety disorder or depressive illness among girls.
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