1 in 6 U.S. adults say they have taken psychiatric drugs

About 1 in 6 U.S. adults reported taking at least one psychiatric drug, usually an antidepressant or an anti-anxiety medication, and most had been doing so for a year or more, according to a new analysis. The report is based on 2013 government survey data on some 242 million adults and provides the most fine-grained snapshot of prescription drug use for psychological and sleep problems to date.

“I follow this area, so I knew the numbers would be high,” said Thomas J. Moore, a researcher at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit in Alexandria, Virginia, and the lead author of the analysis, which was published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. “But in some populations, the rates are extraordinary.”

Moore and his co-author, Donald R. Mattison of Risk Sciences International in Ottawa, Ontario, combed household survey and insurance data compiled by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. They found that 1 in 5 women had reported filling at least one prescription that year — about two times the number of men who had — and that whites were about twice as likely to have done so than blacks or Hispanics. Nearly 85 percent of those who had gotten at least one drug had filled multiple prescriptions for that drug over the course of the year studied, which the authors considered longterm use.

Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, who was not involved in the study, said the new analysis provided a clear, detailed picture of current usage.

“It reflects a growing acceptance of and reliance on prescription medications” to manage common emotional problems, he said.

The most commonly used type of drug was an antidepressant like Zoloft and Celexa, followed by an anti-anxiety or sleeping pill like Xanax and Ambien. All of these drugs can have withdrawal effects, including panic attacks and sleep problems, for many people on them long term. The prescribing of most anti-anxiety pills is strongly regulated in this and other countries because the drugs can be habit-forming.

“To discover that 8 in 10 adults are taking psychiatric drugs long term raises safety concerns, given that there’s reason to believe some of this continued use is due to dependence and withdrawal symptoms,” Moore said.