In a study of the Swedish Medical Birth Registry published in the British Medical Journal, researchers identified all 324,510 single children born between 1988 and 1990 and examined mothers’ and children’s characteristics throughout pregnancy, delivery, infancy, childhood and adolescence. They found that, adjusting for other factors, lower income of the mother’s birth country was linked to lower a probability that their children would use antipsychotics at the age of eighteen.
Article → Note from Kermit Cole, “In the News” Editor:
The authors suggest that their results indicate “a relative underutilization of psychotropic medication in 18-year-old descendants of immigrants.” Other conclusions are possible: among them that a bias against antipsychotic utilization may in fact turn out well for the children of immigrants. This interpretation is not presented (and possibly not supportable) in the study, however there are some data (Table 1) suggesting that the children of immigrants are relatively healthy.