A three-country comparison of psychotropic medication prevalence in youth

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The study aims to compare cross-national prevalence of psychotropic medication use in youth.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A population-based analysis of psychotropic medication use based on administrative claims data for the year 2000 was undertaken for insured enrollees from 3 countries in relation to age group (0–4, 5–9, 10–14, and 15–19), gender, drug subclass pattern and concomitant use. The data include insured youth aged 0–19 in the year 2000 from the Netherlands (n = 110,944), Germany (n = 356,520) and the United States (n = 127,157).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The annual prevalence of any psychotropic medication in youth was significantly greater in the US (6.7%) than in the Netherlands (2.9%) and in Germany (2.0%). Antidepressant and stimulant prevalence were 3 or more times greater in the US than in the Netherlands and Germany, while antipsychotic prevalence was 1.5–2.2 times greater. The atypical antipsychotic subclass represented only 5% of antipsychotic use in Germany, but 48% in the Netherlands and 66% in the US. The less commonly used drugs e.g. alpha agonists, lithium and antiparkinsonian agents generally followed the ranking of US>Dutch>German youth with very rare (less than 0.05%) use in Dutch and German youth. Though rarely used, anxiolytics were twice as common in Dutch as in US and German youth. Prescription hypnotics were half as common as anxiolytics in Dutch and US youth and were very uncommon in German youth. Concomitant drug use applied to 19.2% of US youth which was more than double the Dutch use and three times that of German youth.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Prominent differences in psychotropic medication treatment patterns exist between youth in the US and Western Europe and within Western Europe. Differences in policies regarding direct to consumer drug advertising, government regulatory restrictions, reimbursement policies, diagnostic classification systems, and cultural beliefs regarding the role of medication for emotional and behavioral treatment are likely to account for these differences.</p

Potential biomass accumulation in Amazonian regrowth forests.

Abstract Biomass accumulation in the secondary forests of abandoned pastures and slash-and-burn agricultural fallows is an important but poorly constrained component of the regional carbon budget for the Brazilian Amazon. Using empirical relationships derived from a global analysis, we predicted potential aboveground biomass accumulation (ABA) for the region\u27s regrowth forests based on soil texture and climate data. For regrowth forests on nonsandy soils, the globally derived relationship provided a nearly unbiased linear predictor of Amazonian validation data consisting of 66 stands at seven sites; there was no significant difference between stands that regrew following use as pasture land and those that regrew following slash-and-burn agriculture. For regrowth forests on nonsandy soil, the 1 sigma error range of our ABA model was 58%-171% for the Amazonian validation data. For regrowth forests on sandy soils, the validation data were limited to 19 stands at one site, and the globally derived relationship was substantially biased multiplicatively and nonlinearly. Hence we developed a rerefinement by adding to our validation data ABA values from the two Amazonian sites with sandy soil that had previously been included in the global analysis. Based on a conservative jackknife goodness-of-fit assessment (leaving out one site at a time), we calculated a 1 sigma error range of 42%-158% for our sandy soil Amazonian regrowth forest ABA model. We present our predictions of potential regrowth forest ABA as a set of 0.5° resolution maps for the region at 5, 10, and 20 years following abandonment

Modeling the Complex Impacts of Timber Harvests to Find Optimal Management Regimes for Amazon Tidal Floodplain Forests

<div><p>At the Amazon estuary, the oldest logging frontier in the Amazon, no studies have comprehensively explored the potential long-term population and yield consequences of multiple timber harvests over time. Matrix population modeling is one way to simulate long-term impacts of tree harvests, but this approach has often ignored common impacts of tree harvests including incidental damage, changes in post-harvest demography, shifts in the distribution of merchantable trees, and shifts in stand composition. We designed a matrix-based forest management model that incorporates these harvest-related impacts so resulting simulations reflect forest stand dynamics under repeated timber harvests as well as the realities of local smallholder timber management systems. Using a wide range of values for management criteria (e.g., length of cutting cycle, minimum cut diameter), we projected the long-term population dynamics and yields of hundreds of timber management regimes in the Amazon estuary, where small-scale, unmechanized logging is an important economic activity. These results were then compared to find optimal stand-level and species-specific sustainable timber management (STM) regimes using a set of timber yield and population growth indicators. Prospects for STM in Amazonian tidal floodplain forests are better than for many other tropical forests. However, generally high stock recovery rates between harvests are due to the comparatively high projected mean annualized yields from fast-growing species that effectively counterbalance the projected yield declines from other species. For Amazonian tidal floodplain forests, national management guidelines provide neither the highest yields nor the highest sustained population growth for species under management. Our research shows that management guidelines specific to a region’s ecological settings can be further refined to consider differences in species demographic responses to repeated harvests. In principle, such fine-tuned management guidelines could make management more attractive, thus bridging the currently prevalent gap between tropical timber management practice and regulation.</p></div

Appendix A. Data used to analyze post-disturbance biomass accumulation in global secondary forests: broadleaf non-tropical forests growing on sandy soils.

Data used to analyze post-disturbance biomass accumulation in global secondary forests: broadleaf non-tropical forests growing on sandy soils