USA: Rekordhoch bei Psychopharmaka und Therapien – Tiefpunkt in Bezug auf psychische Gesundheit

Veröffentlicht am 1. September 2023 von TE. „The United States has reached the peak of therapy. Why is our mental health deteriorating?“ This is the question Jamie Ducharme asks in a recent article for Time magazine. The topic of counseling has become a hot topic, with books, podcasts, and movies on the subject abound. Professional athletes, celebrities, and politicians regularly speak out about their mental health issues. And everyone, whether justified or not, speaks the language of therapy, with conversations filled with references to gaslighting, toxic people, and boundaries. This is also reflected in the data: According to the latest estimates from federal agencies, about one in eight adults in the United States now takes an antidepressant. And one in five has recently received psychiatric treatment – an increase of nearly 15 million people since 2002. Even in the recent past – from 2019 to 2022 – the use of psychosocial services among millions of US adults with commercial insurance increased by nearly 40 percent, according to a recent study in the JAMA Health Forum. „But something doesn’t add up,“ says Ducharme. „Even though more and more people are seeking therapy, mental health in the United States is deteriorating in many ways.“ The suicide rate, for example, has increased by about 30 percent since 2000. Nearly one-third of adult US citizens now suffer from depression or anxiety, about three times as many as in 2019. And about one in 25 adults suffers from a severe mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. At the end of 2022, only 31 percent of adults in the United States described their mental health as „excellent,“ compared to 43 percent two decades earlier. So, according to Ducharme, the trend is going in the wrong direction, even though more and more people are seeking treatment. She quotes Robert Trestman, chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing, who believes that several factors play a role, some positive and some negative. On the positive side, more people are willing to seek treatment because the topic of mental health has reached the mainstream and is less stigmatized. This increases the overall number of people diagnosed and treated for mental health problems. Less positively, according to Trestman, more people are experiencing problems during socially turbulent times such as the „corona period“ and the great recession. This increases the neediness in an already overwhelmed system, so some people do not get the support they desire or need. However, some experts believe that the problem goes deeper and extends to the foundations of modern psychiatry – and cannot be explained solely by inadequate access to help. In their opinion, the problem lies not only in the fact that demand exceeds supply but also in the fact that the supply was not very good from the start and relies on therapies and medications that only scratch the surface of a vast ocean of needs. In most medical specialties, doctors use objective data to make their diagnoses and treatment plans. If blood pressure is too high, you get medication for high blood pressure. In psychiatry, however, there are no such clear criteria. Not that they haven’t tried to establish them. „But by and large, we don’t have biomarkers,“ says psychiatrist Thomas Insel, who led the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) from 2002 to 2015. „We don’t have many of the things that exist in other areas of medicine.“ Psychiatry does have its „bible,“ the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM sets diagnostic criteria for mental illnesses, which largely rely on symptoms: what they look like, how long they last, and how disruptive they are. Compared to other medical fields, however, this is a rather subjective approach. It is essentially up to the individual doctor, based on their observations and the patient’s statements, to decide whether the symptoms have crossed the line from normal to disturbed – and this process is increasingly taking place during short appointments via teletherapy apps, where things can easily go off the rails. Perhaps too much focus is being placed on the individual – and not enough attention is being paid to the fact that it is the social structures that are increasingly burdening people mentally. For decades, industrialized countries like the United States and Germany have been becoming increasingly unfair. The majority has to work harder and harder to survive, and they increasingly have fears about the future. The middle class is eroding. ********************** Support us with an individual amount or a donation subscription. This makes an important contribution to our journalistic independence. We exist as a medium only thanks to you, dear readers. Thank you very much! Or buy our yearbook 2022 (more information here) with our best texts in the webshop: Order in CHF here and in EUR here

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USA: Höchststand bei Psychopillen und Therapien – Tiefpunkt bei mentaler Gesundheit

Veröffentlicht am 1. September 2023 von TE. «Die USA haben den Höhepunkt der Therapie erreicht. Warum verschlechtert sich unsere psychische Gesundheit?» Das fragt Jamie Ducharme in einem aktuellen Beitrag für das Magazin Time. Das Thema Beratung sei allseits zu einem gefundenen Fressen geworden. Es gebe dazu Bücher, Podcasts und Filme zu Hauf. Profisportler, Prominente und Politiker gingen regelmässig mit ihren psychischen Problemen an die Öffentlichkeit. Und jeder spreche – ob berechtigt oder nicht – in der Sprache der Therapie, wobei die Gespräche mit Hinweisen auf Gaslighting, toxische Menschen und Grenzen gespickt seien. Dies spiegele sich auch in den Daten wider: Nach den jüngsten Schätzungen der Bundesbehörden nimmt heute etwa jeder achte Erwachsene in den USA ein Antidepressivum ein. Und jeder fünfte war

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