More than one-in-five adult Americans took at least one pharmaceutical drug commonly used to treat a psychiatric or behavioral disorder in 2010 according to “America’s State of Mind,” a Medco Health Solutions, Inc. analysis of trends in mental health medication usage among approximately 2.5 million insured Americans, comparing utilization of antidepressants, antipsychotics, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drugs and anti-anxiety treatments from 2001 to 2010. Even more concerning about this situation is that for American women, the numbers rose to one in four. While I’m not totally surprised at these numbers considering all the advertising that pharmaceutical companies are allowed to do, it does cause me to stop and think about better solutions to this health crisis.
As far as use, not surprisingly, antidepressants come in number one with over 20 percent of women on a drug typically prescribed to treat depression. Anxiety treatments used by women are at almost twice the rate of men; however, greatest use is found among middle-aged women (45-65 years old – note these ages are normally the ages of peri-menopause and post menopause), 11 percent of whom were on an anti-anxiety drug last year.
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