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BACKGROUND: To date, no research has explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychotropic prescription patterns among young people in Japan, where lockdown measures were relatively less stringent. AIMS: This study aimed to investigate changes in the prescription patterns of psychotropic medications for Japanese young people before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, using the DeSC Database. METHOD: We conducted an interrupted time-series analysis, with data from February 2016 to November 2022, to assess the pandemic's effects on psychotropic prescriptions for children, adolescents and young adults. The analysis included subgroups based on age (6-11, 12-17 and 18-22 years) and gender. The number of patients prescribed psychiatric drugs before and after the pandemic was analysed. RESULTS: Among 93 385 individuals, psychotropic prescriptions - except anxiolytics - increased overall, although not uniformly across age and gender groups. Significant upward trends were observed in the prescription rates of antidepressants (from 2.53 (95% CI 2.21-2.84) to 6.47 (95% CI 5.89-7.05) patients per month), anxiolytics (from -1.83 (95% CI -2.52 to -1.13) to 7.37 (95% CI 6.06-8.67) per month) and hypnotics/sedatives (from -1.48 (95% CI 0.73-2.24) to 6.62 (95% CI 5.21-8.03) per month). CONCLUSIONS: A persistent increase in psychotropic medication prescriptions was observed after the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the influence of age and gender, clinicians and society must prioritise the mental health needs of the female and adolescent populations. These findings may be generalisable to other countries that implemented less stringent lockdown measures.
Huang et al. (Sat,) studied this question.