The use of antidepressants continues to grow by about 10 percent each year among children and adolescents and the fastest growing segment is preschoolers aged 0-5 years. Use among girls in this age group doubled and use among boys grew by 64 percent from 1998 to 2002. Altogether, this represents a 49 percent increase. You can read this past article about antidepressants causing suicides in kids to find out why this is such a concerning increase, particularly when there are other treatment options.
New York Times April 2, 2004