ABSTRACT
Similar to the use of ‘‘add-on’’ or adjunctive pharmacotherapy in the treatment of congestive heart failure and epilepsy (Frye et al. 2000), medication combinations are being increasingly used for the treatment of child psychiatric disorders (Wilens et al. 1995). This emerging field of pediatric research (Findling et al. 1999, 2000) and clinical practice (Connor et al. 1998) may be partly driven by an apparent change in the treatment paradigm of psychopharmacological practice in the last few years, mainly an emphasis on the treatment of ‘‘target symptoms’’ (Pope and Hudson 1986), rather than specific diagnoses. In addition, high rates of child psychiatric comorbidity (Geller et al. 1996; Stephens and Sandor 1999) have motivated clinicians to consider treating pediatric patients with more than one single agent (Martin et al. 1999). In this chapter we briefly review the most common adult combination strategies and the child psychiatric disorders that may require combinations of pharmacotherapeutic agents.
