2024-10-02 12:30:10
In the courtyard of the Bois de Bondy psychiatric center, May 7, 2020, in Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis). LOIC VENANCE / AFP
We can no longer count the alerts on the mental health of young people launched by caregivers – doctors, psychiatrists, pediatricians, psychologists… This time, the signal came from Health Insurance, which highlighted, in a report published during the summer, the increase in the prescription of psychotropic drugs among 12-25 year olds, between 2019 and 2023.
Psychotropics: the word, a bit of a catch-all, encompasses a wide variety of treatments – antidepressants, anxiolytics, antipsychotics, hypnotics, mood stabilizers, etc. – responding to different prescription logics, doctors are keen to point out. However, these new figures have not escaped their notice, and many take up the adjective attached by Health Insurance to its observation: that of an evolution “concerning”while putting forward several hypotheses to explain it.
In total, nearly 936,000 young people were reimbursed at least once, in 2023, for a psychotropic medication, Health Insurance calculated. This is 5% more than in 2022, and 18% more than in 2019, the year preceding the crisis linked to Covid-19 and its confinements, i.e. 144,000 additional young people.
“The ills of society have changed”
Depending on the category of drugs, the increase is more or less steep. Thus, + 60% of young people are on antidepressants, + 38% on antipsychotics (prescribed for schizophrenia or bipolarity in particular); and + 8% of young people are taking anxiolytics, this latest increase being exclusively attributable to young girls.
These figures first appear as a reflection of the deterioration of the mental health of young people. Child psychiatrist at the Necker-Enfants Malades hospital, Pauline Chaste underlines this: “In a context of such a sharp increase in emergency situations, we must find a way to calm anxieties as quickly as possible”she describes, dismissing the criticism sometimes raised towards doctors, who would have become “prescribing machines” : “We have gone through a major crisis [celle du Covid-19], and we are still there, we must answer it. »
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Beyond this unanimous observation, other explanations for this greater use of medications are questioned. Can we detect certain disorders earlier? In other words, are we managing to detect certain mental illnesses better than in the past? It’s a lead. “There was a significant delay in diagnosis for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia”continues the child psychiatrist. And to add another explanation to the sharp increase in antipsychotics, otherwise called neuroleptics: “We also prescribe these treatments to young people who have neither bipolar disorder nor schizophrenia, but who may be impulsive, put themselves in danger, make multiple suicide attempts, and need it in the short term. »
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