The disproportionate increase in treatment for young people with low-level mental health impairment is gaining more attention as mental health treatment for young populations increases and the concept of psychopathology expands. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that outpatient mental health treatment and medication use for psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents increased from 1996-1998 to 2010-2012. While younger groups with milder symptoms or no impairment did not contribute to the increase in absolute public services, the severely mentally impaired group was very much associated with increased service use, but still less than half of the total services in 2010-2012 overall. The study analyzed household pharmaceutical costs obtained from the 1996-1998, 2003-2005, and 2010-2012 U.S. National Surveys on trends in mental health outpatient services for people aged 6-17 years, and included 53,622 subjects. Mental impairment was measured by the Columbia Impairment Scale, with ≧16 classified as more severe mental impairment and <16 as less severe mental impairment. The results showed that outpatient mental health services for adolescents, increased from 9.2% in 1996-1998 to 13.3% in 2010-2012 (OR 1.52, 95% CI 1.35-1.72). Mental health service use among the younger population with severe mental impairment increased from 26.2% to 43.9%, much greater than the population with less severe or no impairment (6.7%-9.6%). However, the absolute annual increase in services was significantly higher for the less severely impaired or non-impaired population (2.74 million to 4.19 million) than for the severely impaired population (1.56 million to 2.28 million). Significant overall increases occurred in psychotherapy (from 4.2% to 6.0%), treatment of psychiatric medications (from 5.5% to 8.9%), including stimulants and related medications (from 4.0% to 6.6%), antidepressants (from 1.5% to 2.6%), and antipsychotics (from 0.2% to 1.2%).