WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN ABOUT THIS SUBJECT? center dot In the USA psycho-stimulant use has increased rapidly in the 1990s and stabilized around 2000. center dot This study describes the prevalence of psycho-stimulant use between1996 and 2006 in the Netherlands. WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS center dot The prevalence of psycho-stimulant use among youth in the Netherlands has increased more than eightfold in the period 1996-2006, but in 2006 it is still below the prevalence in the USA. To describe the use of psycho-stimulants in the Netherlands between 1996 and 2006 in children and adolescents, and in relation to age and sex. With the pharmacy prescription database the IADB.nl, yearly prevalences of psycho-stimulants per 1000 children were calculated, as was the length of psycho-stimulant use with Kaplan-Meier method in SPSS 12.0. Psycho-stimulant use increased in boys (0-19) from 4.5 parts per thousand in 1996 to 31.1 parts per thousand in 2006 and for girls from 0.7 to 8.1 parts per thousand, respectively. The largest increase was among boys aged 10-19 years. There is a trend towards prescribing the sustained release preparation of methylphenidate (Concerta). In the Netherlands a large increase in psycho-stimulants use is observed. However, in the Netherlands the prevalence ratio male/female declined from 6.4 in 1996 to 3.8 in 2006.