Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children under the ages of 18 and 13 respectively have been prescribed (a) antidepressants, (b) benzodiazepines and (c) z drugs in the last three years.
The information is not available in the requested format. The table below shows the information reported by financial year, with partial data available for 2017/18.
Period | Drug Group | Number of unique identifiable patients | Proportion of items where patient details could be identified | Number of unique identifiable patients aged 0-12 | Number of unique identifiable patients aged 0-17 |
April 2015 - March 2016 | Antidepressants | 6,826,829 | 94.23% | 4,406 | 68,571 |
April 2016 - March 2017 | Antidepressants | 7,105,808 | 96.63% | 4,575 | 69,316 |
April 2017 - December 2017 | Antidepressants | 6,734,500 | 97.32% | 3,987 | 59,207 |
April 2015 - March 2016 | Benzodiazepines | 1,617,647 | 91.06% | 12,162 | 23,198 |
April 2016 - March 2017 | Benzodiazepines | 1,635,121 | 93.69% | 13,454 | 24,330 |
April 2017 - December 2017 | Benzodiazepines | 1,347,872 | 94.59% | 12,057 | 20,734 |
April 2015 - March 2016 | Z-Drugs | 1,045,007 | 93.13% | 19 | 2,509 |
April 2016 - March 2017 | Z-Drugs | 1,037,881 | 95.59% | 21 | 2,127 |
April 2017 - December 2017 | Z-Drugs | 847,184 | 96.34% | 24 | 1,397 |
Source: NHS Business Services Authority