Talk therapy is more used by Americans, while using psychiastic medication is on the move: shots

According to a new study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, more American adults with mental health therapy have received discussion therapy in recent years. The study It also found that the number of people who only use psychiatric medicines for treatment decreases for the first time in years.

“We see that this increase is a time at this time when psychotherapy plays a more important role in outpatient mental health care” Dr. Mark OlfsonPsychiatrist and epidemiologist at Columbia University.

“The number of American adults who receive psychotherapy rose from around 6.5% in 2018, up to 8.5% in 2021,” he says, “so that has risen from around 16 and a half million to almost 22 million people.”

The results are a significant change compared to the patterns of previous years, explains Olfson, the main author of the study.

Since the late nineties, the use of talk therapy has taken off first, then plateau. It was also a time when the use of psychiatric medication increased.

“What we had declined until the late 1980s when Prozac came on stage for the first time, and the other antidepressants like the SSRIS followed,” added Olfson, “Medicines had assumed an increasingly important role in the provision of outpatient mental health care.”

Between 2018 and 2021, however, he and his team found that only medication decreased from 67.6% to 62.1% in adults who received outpatient mental health care. At the same time, the percentage of patients who only received conversation therapy (without medication) grew. They found this trend in people with depression, anxiety and trauma and stress -related disorders.

Another positive finding of the study was that more people held more people in the therapy after the start. The study recorded more visits to new patients in one year than in previous years.

“Overall, it indicates this psychotherapy [is] People become more accessible and people can take advantage of it ” Dr. Jessi GoldChief Wellness Officer of the University of Tennessee.

“I think if you are more aware of what a therapy even looks like, do not expect you to be repaired immediately, or you don’t turn away immediately,” she says. Although the trends documented in the new study started in 2019, the Covid 19 pandemic also adds people more open to mental health and the search for support for gold.

Telegesundheit is part of the picture

The expansion of telemedicine from the Pandemie era has probably helped more people to talk about conversation therapy, as documented in the study.

“I think Telehealth has increased access for people who may not have access to a therapist at their respective location or his time,” says Gold. “I think access has definitely increased, but also the conversation about it.”

Both olfson and gold indicate another important finding in the new study: The types of providers who lead to discussion therapy have also expanded to have licensed consultants and social workers, in contrast to psychiatrists and psychologists as in previous years.

“If you have a demand and a need for access, creative models play into play,” says Gold. “We really examined how to increase access and supply models, and that doesn’t always require an MD or a doctoral thesis.”

However, access is still a problem

However, Olfson notes that he and his colleagues have found that the people who benefited most from this increased access to talk therapy are mostly the wealthy. “It is among people who have more education and private insurance. They have a higher income; they are usually in urban areas,” he says. “These are the people who benefit the most.”

He hopes that the results will be used to improve access to the mental health care of people by fewer means.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the latest national survey shows that this Only about half of all Americans With every mental illness, it was cared for in the previous year.