While prescriptions for antidepressants have climbed in the U.S. in recent years, those for anxiety and insomnia have fallen, a new report shows — but the numbers also suggest the coronavirus pandemic could fuel a rise in the use of medications for all three conditions.
A new report from pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts finds that prescriptions for medications used to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions are climbing. The findings come from an analysis of weekly prescription data from 2015 to 2019. One important caveat of the data, which draws from pharmacy claims data from 3.4 million privately-insured people in the U.S., is that it does not include information on people on public insurance, who generally face a higher burden of mental illness.
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