Was there ever a time in the annals of modern human sociology when teen-agers weren't filled with personal angst, insecurity, given to mood swings, sometimes depressed, frequently anxious about their status among their peer groups? It's a time of hormonal change that tends to be confusing to young people, trying to find their way into the society they have inherited generation after generation.

It's always been wryly recognized as a difficult psychological passage for the young, that slow and perturbing passage into maturity and eventually adulthood. Conflicting emotions assail young people and they learn to come to grips with them, sometimes by confiding in one another and supporting each other, sometimes silently and withdrawn.

The rise of social media in the current era, with the ease by which communication has been advanced through the Internet may have made young people more aware of their shared insecurities, but they remain vulnerable to their insecurities, and with the use of various modes of social media they become even more vulnerable to peer pressure.

Presently, the medical profession has entered this social dilemma perhaps prodded by anxious parents trying to pave the way in a kinder manner for their children whose confusion and perhaps intemperate reactions making them difficult to communicate with make parents fearful. Young people are being diagnosed by their doctors increasingly as falling into various categories of mental disease, from depression to more serious conditions.

They are often sent to specialists who rely not on advancing advice and presenting them with non-prescription protocols to ease their temporary plight, that flight into adulthood and intellectual security, but more expeditiously, with prescription drugs.

New Canadian research indicates that children medicated with Prozac-like drugs and other antidepressants is on a rise, three-fold over a 24-year period under study. Girls from the ages of 15 to 19 represent the heaviest users of antidepressant prescription rates rising 14.5 times over the study period.

That prescription increase is being attributed to the growing use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRIs. "The safety and efficacy of SSRIs in children are still controversial", stated the study's lead author, Xiangfel Meng, a research fellow in the department of psychiatry at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. Health Canada, as well as drug regulatory agencies globally have issued warnings as far back as a decade ago linking SSRIs with the increased risk of aggression, mania, suicidal thinking and "other abnormal behavioural changes", Dr. Meng added.

"We would not be surprised" if other provinces across Canada are experiencing smilmilar trends said Dr. Meng. The study was published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, pointing out that family doctors represented the major prescribers, followed by psychiatrists.

"Evidence shows that mental disorders, especially depression, are being more frequently diagnosed among children and adolescents", the study authors concluded. Obviously, there are now concerns being expressed that children are being over-diagnosed. "Are we diagnosing children and adolescents much more easily than we were?" queries Barbara Mintzes, assistant profesor with the school of population and public health, University of British Columbia.

That answer seems unequivocally yes. Data from published and unpublished trials appear to suggest that antidepressants provide limited benefit only over placebo sugar pills, for depression in the young.

Perhaps it's past time to recognize that indeed the passage of time ushers young people out of the depressive state into a more mature state of relative calm enabling them to get on with their lives without the crutch (usually harmful, with side effects) of prescription drugs.