Are too many Americans taking antidepressants?

Filed 36m ago · Via The Conversation · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Matt's Blues

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Michael D Beckwith from England · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A veteran psychiatrist writes that roughly one in six American adults take antidepressants, and that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has launched an effort urging doctors to seek alternatives to psychiatric drugs when possible.

The piece notes most prescriptions come from primary care providers rather than psychiatrists, that screening tools can misfire in both directions, and that telehealth prescribing jumped from roughly 1-2% pre-pandemic to about a third of antidepressant scripts by 2022.

The author flags one Kennedy claim in particular: that stopping antidepressants can be harder for some than quitting heroin, a comparison the piece says research does not generally support.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A government health chief comparing a common prescription drug to heroin withdrawal is the kind of line that gets repeated at the supper table long after anyone remembers the nuance around it. The actual doctor in the room is stuck doing cleanup, pointing out that the system, not just the pill, is the problem. That is a hard sell against a sound bite.

Source: Read the original at The Conversation → Scored: Matt's Blues · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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