Between 1987 and 1996 drug use among children and adolescents surged. Some reports say it doubled, others say it tripled.

If you're surprised the nation did not rise up in shock and indignation, please know there's a good reason: The drugs in question were not such illicit substances as marijuana and cocaine, but legally prescribed pharmaceuticals such as Ritalin and Prozac.

A University of Maryland study of 900,000 patients in one unnamed state showed that stimulants such as Ritalin, most often prescribed for attention deficit disorder, were the most commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs for children in 1996, followed by anti depressants and mood stabilizers. Other ill nesses cited by prescribing physicians were anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers and many physicians say this dramatic increase is evidence of progress in successfully treating illnesses that responded reluctantly or not at all to traditional approaches not involving medication. The development and increased availability of psychiatric drugs means that children whose mental and emotional problems sometimes barred them from school found they were able through treatment to assume an improved quality of life.

To that extent, these are wonder drugs. They address an urgent need and they produce positive results. They are a wonderful addition to the range of therapies available for ill children.

But this trend raises another issue: Are we Americans overmedicating our children, setting the stage for a society regulated by mood altering drugs? And, almost as critical, are we depending on mood-altering drugs to do the hard work that psychotherapists, counselors, churches, parents and peers used to do?

In short, are we passing the buck on our children's future?

In 2000, a congressional subcommittee looking into critical aspects of pediatric medicine concluded that children in America were being falsely diagnosed and treated for mental illness at an alarming rate. The American Academy of Pediatrics also has raised concerns.

The signs are troubling. For one thing, medication is just too easy a choice. Insurers also tend to like medical therapy because it often gives quick, positive, measurable results. Some medical care brokers tend to be less assured in dealing with long-term solutions to self-esteem and socialization problems, preferring the identifiable results produced by pills that can be counted out one by one.

The danger is that health-care consumers will become complacent as to their own role in child and adolescent health. Family problems, school problems and personal adjustment problems become medical problems, and chemical treatment is increasingly seen as the solution.

There is much to recommend today's psychiatric drugs. They do produce results. But if they produce results too readily, they can, in effect, short-circuit the treatment process.

And in the broader sense, these wonder drugs could convince medical researchers that this -- and not psychotherapy or good, solid family attention -- is the wave of the future. If that were the case, science would be ignoring valid alternatives and courting the risks of a monolithic approach to treatment.

If your adolescent child is difficult with peers, rebellious in the home, uncooperative in school, sleepless, depressed, hyper, moody, uncommunicative, angry, afraid, withdrawn or desperate, it is important to try to get at the cause of the problem. Enlist professional help as warranted, and explore all reasonable alternatives.

Don't just reach for a bottle of pills and hope they wipe out the symptoms and allow everyone to go back to what they were doing before