Study: 1 in 6 US Adults Use Psychiatric Drugs

According to new research, 1 in 6 adults in the United States reported filling at least 1 psychiatric drug prescription in 2013.

Seeking to characterize adult use of psychiatric drugs in the US, investigators used publicly available, nationally representative data from the 2013 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to calculate percentages of the adult population (ages 18 to 85) using 3 classes of psychiatric drugs: antidepressants; anxiolytics, sedatives, and hypnotics; and antipsychotics.
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Overall, more than 350,000 prescriptions from 37,421 individuals were included in the study, which defined long-term psychiatric drug use as 3 or more prescriptions filled in 2013, or a prescription started in 2011 or earlier. The authors used logistic regression to compute odds ratios to investigate differences in subcategories of sex, race and ethnicity, and age.

The researchers found that 16.7% of the adults studied filled at least 1 psychiatric drug prescription in 2013, including 12% reporting filling at least 1 prescription for antidepressants, while 8.3% filled prescriptions for anxiolytics, sedatives, and hypnotics; and 1.6% took antipsychotics. The most commonly prescribed drugs were Zoloft, Celexa, Xanax, Ambien, and Prozac.

Rates of use for psychiatric drugs were highest among white adults, with use also increasing with age. For example, 25.1% of adults between the ages of 60 and 85 years reported using psychiatric drugs, compared to 9% of those between the ages of 18 and 39. In addition, women were more likely than men to report using psychiatric drugs.

Most psychiatric drug use reported by adults was long term, with 84.3% having filled 3 or more prescriptions in 2013, or indicating that they had started taking the drug during 2011 or earlier. Differences in long-term use among the 3 drug classes were small, according to the investigators, who note that the long-term users filled a mean of 9.8 prescriptions for psychiatric drugs during 2013.

"In a previous study, we found most patients were long-term users of the hypnotic zopidem tartrate, despite recommendations for short-term use, and many were combining it with other central nervous system depressants despite warnings," the authors wrote. "Safe use of psychiatric drugs could be improved by increasing emphasis on prescribing these agents at the lowest effective dose and systematically reassessing the need for continued use."

—Mark McGraw

Reference

Moore T, Mattison D. Adult utilizations of psychiatric drugs and differences by sex, age, and race [published online December 12, 2016]. JAMA Intern Med. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.7507.