Common pitfalls and how to avoid them in child and adolescent psychopharmacology - Part 1 (Besag, 2024)

Cortese S, Besag FM, Clark B, Hollis C, Kilgariff J, Moreno C, Nicholls D, Wilkinson P, Woodbury-Smith M, Sharma A

Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) [J Psychopharmacol] 2024 Apr; Vol. 38 (4), pp. 311-317. 

Available online at this link

As Faculty of the British Association for Psychopharmacology BAP) course on child and adolescent psychopharmacology, we previously published a paper (Cortese et al., 2023) reporting the most common questions we have been asked in recent editions of the course, alongside evidence-based and/or expert-informed answers. Here, based on our experience during the course, we have selected what we deem are the most common pitfalls, and how to avoid them, in child and adolescent psychopharmacology, focusing on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and related disorders, and tic disorder. We have grouped the pitfalls by disorder to which they refer, in alphabetical order.  Pitfalls in relation to the treatment of other disorders (autism and intellectual disability, eating disorders, neuropsychiatric corre lates of epilepsy and psychosis) are addressed in a separate paper (part II).