Antipsychotic Use Among Children and Adolescents in Montevideo, 2018-2022

Pharmacy dispensing data from eight healthcare centers in Montevideo covering approximately 230,000 children and adolescents aged 1-19 years from 2018 to 2022. The dataset, created by Santiago Cabral and shared on figshare, measures antipsychotic utilization in defined daily doses per 1,000 inhabitants/day, segmented by socioeconomic level, age, sex, and time period.

Use Cases

• Analyzing trends in antipsychotic prescription rates based on the defined daily dose (DDD) metric over a five-year period.
• Investigating socioeconomic disparities in pediatric mental healthcare based on utilization differences across provider types.
• Studying age and sex-based patterns in antipsychotic use, with data segmented for groups aged 1-4, 5-14, and 15-19 years.
• Evaluating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medication dispensing by comparing pre-pandemic, start of pandemic, and post-pandemic periods.

Strengths

• Data covers a five-year period (2018-2022) across eight healthcare centers.
• Includes a defined population of approximately 230,000 children and adolescents.
• Provides a primary endpoint metric (DDD per 1,000 inhabitants/day) calculated globally and by drug.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is limited to Montevideo, Uruguay, which may affect generalizability.

Provenance

Source

Santiago Cabral via figshare.

Collection Method

Descriptive observational study analyzing pharmacy dispensing records.

Time Range

2018-01-01 to 2022-12-31

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 05:27:27; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Montevideo, Uruguay