HOW NEW DATA SHOWS AMERICANS' PHYSICAL & MENTAL HEALTH ARE SUFFERING MORE THAN BEFORE THE PANDEMIC, PTSD (2241 hits)
For Immediate Release From NAMI-Minnesota!
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Roughly two-thirds of Americans with a diagnosed mental health condition were unable to access treatment in 2021, though they had health insurance.
Most Americans With Mental Health Needs Don't Get Treatment, Report Finds
Roughly two-thirds of Americans with a diagnosed mental health condition were unable to access treatment in 2021 https://www.inseparable.us/AccessAcrossAme... though they had health insurance. And only a third of insured people who visited an emergency department or hospital during a mental health crisis, received follow-up care within a month of being discharged.
"We kept hearing nightmare stories about Americans not getting the treatment that they needed because insurance companies were denying them care," says Bill Smith, founder of Inseparable. "But we didn't have enough data to show just how extensive and deep the problem was."
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The big picture: More Americans reported diabetes diagnoses, less regular healthy eating, high cholesterol and lower confidence this year, compared with before the pandemic, according to Gallup survey data released Thursday: https://news.gallup.com/poll/546989/physic...
"What we're seeing here is definitely pandemic-related," said Dan Witters, the director of Gallup's well-being research. "We're seeing a pretty substantial drop-off in healthy eating habits and high levels of energy to get things done each day."
"These trends are going to dovetail with the rising rates of obesity and diabetes," he added.
Obesity and diabetes are at record highs, per Gallup.
38% of American adults were obese in 2023, up from 32% in 2019. People between 45 and 64 had the highest obesity rate this year, at 44%, and the biggest increase since before the pandemic, up 8 percentage points.
Between the lines: Gallup used body mass index to indicate obesity, but the American Medical Association said this metric has caused "historical harm: https://www.axios.com/2023/06/16/bmi-body-...
BMI has limitations when used for treatment.
"Factors other than obesity status or age could increase the risk of developing diabetes, including physical inactivity, race and ethnicity, and genetic predisposition," the Gallup report said.
When I first started taking anti-depressants in the early 1980s, several years before the advent of Prozac made these medications seem cool, I wasn’t too concerned about what was causing my deep and persistent unhappiness. My childhood had been traumatic, but I was also willing to believe that I had a “chemical imbalance” – the then-ascendant theory about the cause of depression. Perhaps I had a biological predisposition that wouldn’t have been triggered had I grown up under more benign circumstances. Whatever the source of my prolonged misery, I finally found relief with a tricyclic, a pre-Prozac class of anti-depressants – but only after more than half a dozen other medications had failed to alleviate my life-threatening condition.
I consider myself lucky to have had a positive experience of medication for a mental health condition. I am well aware that many others have not – especially those prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs simultaneously, which seems to happen with alarming frequency and with little apparent thought given to the potentially harmful effects of these combination cocktails. In any event, journalist Daniel Bergner makes a compelling case for abandoning this pharmacological approach in The Mind and the Moon: My Brother’s Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches. This readable, well-written indictment of the field of biological psychiatry raises searching questions about the role medications should play – if any – in the treatment of psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other forms of severe mental illness.
