According to a recent study, U.S. children are about three times more likely to be prescribed anti-depressant and stimulant medication than those living in Western Europe.

Researchers, led by Julie Zito, PhD, associate professor in pharmacy and psychiatry at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, analyzed about 2000 health records of almost 600,000 insured children from the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands, children whose age ranged between birth and 19 years old.

The study, published in the Sept. 24 online edition of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, shows an incidence of psychotropic medications among children in the U.S considerably higher than the incidence among their West European counterparts. The psychotropic medications are those drugs that affect the mind, emotions, and behavior of consumers. It seems that 6.7% of American children had been prescribed some sort of psychotropic medication, in contrast with 2.9% in the Netherlands and just 2% in Germany. The use of two or more psychotropic medications was 2 or 3 times more likely in U.S. children than in their European peers.

In an attempt to explain the results of the report, its authors referred to direct-to-consumer drug advertising. As stated by Zito, DTC pharmaceutical ads, which are very common in the United States, are “likely to account for some of the differences.” Additionally, the enlarged use of medication “in the U.S. also reflects the individualist and activist therapeutic mentality of US medical culture,” he added.