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Doctor visits by adolescents and young adults increasingly include mental health diagnoses as well as prescribing psychiatric medications.
This means that in 2019, 17% of outpatient visits for patients ages 13 to 24 in the United States were due to behavioral or mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, self-injurious behavior, and self-harm. This is the conclusion of a new study that found that Other issues. This number has increased sharply since his 2006 year, when only 9% of doctor visits were related to mental illness.
of studyA paper published Thursday in JAMA Network Open also found a sharp increase in the proportion of visits involving psychiatric medications. In 2019, 22.4% of outpatient visits by people aged 13 to 24 were prescribed at least one psychiatric drug, up from 13% in 2006.
big picture
This study is the latest evidence on the changing types of diseases affecting children, adolescents and young adults. For decades, their medical visits involved more physical ailments, including broken bones, viruses, and drunk-driving injuries. However, doctors are increasingly seeing patients for a variety of behavioral and mental health issues.
The reason is not entirely clear. Some experts say that even as society limits the risk of physical illness, modern life imposes new kinds of mental pressures.
The latest research does not reveal the reason for this change. However, the magazine pointed out that the pandemic is not the only cause. “These findings suggest that the increases in mental health conditions seen among young people during the pandemic occurred in an environment that already had increased rates of mental illness,” Harvard University said. The authors, who are pediatricians and psychiatrists at the School of Medicine, write: “Treatment and prevention strategies must consider factors beyond the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic.”
numbers
This analysis was drawn from the National Ambulatory Care Survey, which asked a national sample of clinicians about the reasons for patient visits. Between 2006 and 2019, patients aged 13 to 24 made 1.1 billion health care visits, 145 million of which were related to mental health issues. However, the proportion of mental health-related consultations is increasing year by year, and the number of prescriptions for psychiatric drugs, such as stimulants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and anti-anxiety drugs, is also increasing each year, the study found.
The study found that antidepressants had the largest increase, but did not specify the exact level, said Dr. McConlogue, a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, who wrote the paper. said Dr. Florence T. Bourgeois, co-author of . paper.
Unanswered questions remain about prescribing patterns, she says.
“We can’t tell whether this speaks to the seriousness of the situation or whether it speaks to a change in prescribing attitudes or trends,” she says. In any case, “we are actively treating these symptoms,” she added.
