A recent alarming report found that a staggering 48 babies under the age of one were prescribed with anti-depressants in Australia in the past year.

"There is no good reason why babies should be prescribed with anti-depressants for depression," says Professor Ian Hickie from the Brain Mind & Research Institute in Sydney, "however there may be a number of unusual off label uses such as down syndrome or autism where GPs felt the tablets might help.

"Unfortunately at the moment the data does not record the babies names or what it was used for, but just the ages and numbers of people prescribed with these drugs. So we need to look at new ways to find this information.

"For children [aged] five to ten anti-depressants are sometimes prescribed for anxiety, but again, this should only be when all other psychological therapies have failed and under careful medical supervision."

There have recently been more than 54 cases of adverse reactions to anti-depressant drugs in Australia. These side effects in children included a seven-year-old girl who hallucinated, a four-year-old girl who was so panicked she thought she was dying and a five-year-old boy who developed facial twitching.

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