2024-02-28 09:11:05
Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – Many young people reported deterioration Their mental health During and following the COVID-19 pandemic. Their experiences were confirmed by a new study that found that the rate of prescribing… Antidepressants For this group it also rose during the same period.
The number of young people between the ages of 12 and 25 receiving antidepressants was already increasing before the pandemic.
But since the coronavirus outbreak in the United States in March 2020, the rate of dispensing these medications has increased by 64% faster than usual, according to the study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
In the context of the study, distribution refers to antidepressants given to patients through retail pharmacies, mail order, or long-term care pharmacies. It does not reflect the use of medications once purchased.
Speaking regarding the results, the study’s first author, Dr Kao-Ping Chua, said: “The differences were by gender, which caught my attention the most.”
Chua worked as a primary care pediatrician and is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
For adolescent girls aged 12 to 17 years, Chua noted that the rate of medication dispensing increased by 130% faster than usual following March 2020.
For young women between the ages of 18 and 25, the rate rose by 60%.
Chua noted that there was a “stark contrast” when it came to males, explaining: “What we see is basically no change in the rate of antidepressant prescribing following March 2020 in young men, and there is a sudden drop in the rate of antidepressant prescribing for adolescents among them.” “.
Some previous studies have evaluated changes in distribution rate following the pandemic at the national level, but to the authors’ knowledge, this new study is the first dedicated to adolescents and young adults, and to analyze data following 2020.
“During the pandemic, I found myself being prescribed antidepressants at rates I had never been before,” confirmed Chua, who decided to conduct the research to help enrich the conversation regarding the country’s youth mental health crisis.
“By the second year of the pandemic, emergency room visits had increased due to deteriorating mental health among young people, and we saw a slight increase in visits for suicide attempts or self-harm, especially among teenage girls,” said Dr. Neha Choudhury, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Chaudhry is also the medical director at Modern Health, a private mental health care platform for companies that supports their employees, and she was not involved in the study.
“As a child and adolescent psychiatrist who has witnessed the pandemic’s impact on young people’s mental health firsthand, the study results are not surprising,” Choudhury said via email.
Stress factors affecting young people
The authors cannot fully explain the results.
But in the context of declining mental health among young people, Choudhury says it makes sense “to see a similar trend in antidepressant prescription rates, as these medications are often part of the treatment course for moderate to severe mental health conditions, such as depression.”
Chaudhry noted that increased awareness of mental health, which reduces stigma towards it, has led more young people to seek help, as well as exposure to negative current events.
On top of these things, and pandemic-related stressors, such as losing loved ones, resorting to virtual learning, and lack of a social life, some unique factors related to the state of mental health care during the pandemic may be related to the increase in antidepressant dispensing.
Obtaining and adhering to a prescription for antidepressants has been easier due to the advent of telehealth, whereas previously patients had to visit providers in person, according to Chua.
But this benefit had its own drawbacks as well.
When it came to patients with mild or moderate depression, providers were often advised to try therapy sessions without medication, Chua said.
But during the pandemic, unprecedented demand for teletherapy sessions has led to long wait times.
As a result, there was an increasing tendency for providers to prescribe antidepressants as a bridge, because they might not assume that patients would be able to begin treatment quickly.
Chua said the differences in outcomes in adolescents or young adults do not prove improved mental health for males, but may merely indicate that they are increasingly disconnected from the mental health system, a “really worrying possibility,” he said.
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