Young people in Belgium are consuming less medication than a decade ago. However, the proportion of users of antidepressants has risen significantly. The increase is almost entirely due to the group of girls taking these pills doubling.
After Croatia, Belgium has the highest proportion of young people (15-19 years) taking medication in Europe, with about 25% more people of this age taking medicines than the European average. However, little information is available on this drug use, spurring the Independent Health Insurance Funds to carry out an in-depth study of drug use among young people in Belgium.
The data cover almost 22% of the Belgian population aged 12 to 18. While a large group of young people is on medication, this share fell from almost 55% of adolescents in 2013 to just under 50% in 2022. This means the overall consumption of reimbursed drugs fell by around 10% in one decade. However, in the same period, the proportion of users of antidepressants rose.
"Antidepressants are the group of drugs that experienced the largest relative increase among those most commonly used by adolescents between 2013 and 2022," experts noted. "In fact, the proportion of users of these drugs increased by 60% during this period. More than half of this increase occurred in the year after the start of the pandemic." This can largely be explained by the social isolation young people experienced during this period.
Still, the total number of young people taking antidepressants still remains small, with the share of users rising from 1,905 (or 1%) to 3,351 (1.6%). This is much lower than the proportion of adults taking antidepressants (9.4% in 2022).
Rise among girls and in Brussels
The study detailed an increase in the proportion of antidepressant users among both boys and girls and in all three regions of the country. "However, it should be noted that between 2013 and 2022, the proportion of antidepressant users quasi-doubled among adolescent girls (+90%)," the experts said. The share of users increased from 1.2% to 2.3% in ten years.
"The gender difference does not surprise me," professor of child and adolescent psychiatry Marina Danckaerts (UPC KU Leuven) told Belga News Agency.
"It's a cliché but it's true: when girls feel bad they focus more inward and develop mood or anxiety problems faster than boys. Girls start to look for the cause in themselves and wonder what they are doing wrong. When boys feel bad about themselves, they are more likely to behave defiantly and sometimes develop behavioural problems."
A prolific rise was also recorded among residents of the Brussels-Capital Region (from 0.8% to 1.4% or +68%). However, the share is still lower than that of Flanders (1.7%) and Wallonia (1.6%).
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The socialist mutual health organisation Solidaris also found in a recent survey that more young people have been taking antidepressants since the pandemic, recording an 80% increase among girls in 2022-2023 compared to ten years earlier, and a 22% rise among boys. However, it found that the usage slightly dropped again in 2023.
The use of psychostimulants against attention deficit disorders such as ADHD is also on the rise. The group of young people taking such drugs has increased by 32% in ten years to 2.1%. Young people in Flanders and boys are overrepresented.
