It is in common knowledge that children often find it difficult to sleep. However, there is also a common assumption that sleep aides are only for adults and not for children. However, recent studies have found that the latter notion is often not true.
Researchers from The Ohio State University in Columbus say that when parents seek the help of medication to ensure that their children sleep well, they generally get it. The problem is that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have not permitted the use of many sleep aides to be prescribed for children.
The research is founded on statistics obtained from a huge national health survey carried out between 1993 and 2004. During this time, above 18 million visits to the doctor were made for sleeping problems in children. The uppermost number of visits took place among the children aged between 6 to 12. About one third of the children who received a prescription for sleep were given antihistamines, like hydroxyzine (Atarax), while another 26 percent were prescribed alpha-2 agonists, such as clonidine (Catapres) or guanfacin (Tenex).
Study author Milap C. Nahata, Ph.D., has been quoted as saying:
According to our study, 81 percent of visits among children with sleep difficulties resulted in a prescription for a medication. Many of these medications were frequently used to treat children with sleep difficulties in outpatient settings despite lack of FDA approved labeling to assure their effectiveness and safety in this population.
It is indeed necessary for the authors of this study to conduct more research in order to discover why doctors are prescribing so many of these medications to children and also to build up policies to lessen the use of unapproved drugs in children.
There should be an increased consciousness against such drugs among the parents too. They should understand that these drugs would harm their child’s health more than sleeplessness.
Image Credit: Rostropovich
Via: Ivan Hoe
