The intersection of money and medicine--and its effect on the well-being of patients--has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. Nowhere is that more true than in psychiatry, where
increasing payments to doctors have coincided with the growing use in children of a class of drugs known as atypical antipsychotics.
These best-selling drugs--including Risperdal,
Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify and Geodon--are now being prescribed to more than half a million children in the United States to help parents deal with behavior problems, despite profound risks and almost
no approved uses for minors.
From 2000 to 2005, drugmaker payments to Minnesota psychiatrists rose more than sixfold, to $1.6 million. During those same years, prescriptions of
antipsychotics for children in Minnesota's Medicaid program rose more than ninefold. Those who took the most money from makers of atypicals tended to prescribe the drugs to children the most often,
the data suggest.
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