CORRESPONDENCE More Patients in Less Time

In my opinion, prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs in the child and adolescent psychiatric setting have definitely increased. In addition to improved diagnostic tools, more attention to prodromal phases of psychological disorders, and improved diagnostic tests, the factor of treatment time and the scarce resource “treatment place ” have an (important) role in the increase in prescriptions. The treatment times in hospitals are continually decreasing, the therapeutic teams are forced to treat increasing numbers of patients in the same amount of time and while staff numbers are dropping. Long waiting times for pa-tients and few enticements for the treating staff to accommodate long treatment periods, since these are sanctioned by the health-care system, make longer treatment periods without medication less attractive. In this setting, using medication rapidly creates a solution, albeit only an apparent one. Since hardly any anti