America is facing a mental health crisis, and numbers don’t lie. Twenty-six percent of American women have been diagnosed with a mental illness, and since COVID, that number has just increased. Almost 25% of women over the age of 60 were using an antidepressant as of 2018, and antidepressant prescribing increased by 35% in the past several years. We need to do better for Americans. And, not just adult Americans but also our kids.
For example, nearly half of all US adolescents have had a mental health disorder at some point in their lives—a staggering number when you consider that we are dispensing antidepressant medication to our youngest at rates never seen before. Taking a look at the prescription rate between 2016 and 2022 paints a grim picture; there was a 66% increase in antidepressant prescriptions, and that number exploded and rose 64% faster than that in the months after COVID hit.
It is time to start asking whether we are relying too much on prescription medications for mental health issues. With questions about their effectiveness rising, we need a different perspective. That is why we support preventive, alternative, and holistic approaches to health. In the current system, researchers don’t have enough incentive to study generic drugs and root-cause therapies that look at things like diet. MAHA will empower parents, kids, (and their grandparents,) to get to the heart of the matter and provide resources for potential alternative and holistic approaches to mental health challenges.
