Publish date: 25 June 2025
Nursing Times – Psychotropic medication in inpatient mental health care for young people
Well done to Carol-Anne Murphy, nurse consultant in our Children and Young People’s Mental Health Service who authored an article in the Nursing Times July publication. Carol-Anne talked about how nurses can help ensure that the medication prescribed is necessary and issues relating to consent to treatment. The Clinical Practice Review discusses issues relating to consent to treatment and medication, you can read it here https://www.nursingtimes.net/medicine-management/psychotropic-medication-in-inpatient-mental-health-care-for-young-people-23-06-2025/
This improvement programme highlighted the widespread prescribing of psychotropic medications, multiple psychotropic medication prescribing, and the need for regular review. These results raise concerns about whether such prescribing is excessive and inappropriate for children and young people in inpatient mental health settings. Nurses involved in this area need to take a key role in ensuring that only those medications that provide benefit to the young person are used and continued, and that both the young person and their parents/ carers are well informed about the medication prescribed and enabled to participate and give consent in decision making.
Abstract: A total of 79 percent of providers of children and young people’s mental health inpatient services known to NHS England participated in a psychotropic medication improvement programme. It comprised a medication census covering 73 mental health units, a questionnaire providing the views of young people, and a questionnaire providing the views of parent carers. This article explores the prescribing of psychotropic medications and the need for regular review, as well as issues relating to consent to treatment, including concerns about PRN doses. It emphasises the need to discuss medications more actively with both young people and their parent carers.