Health
Anxiety and depression medication rates spike amid ongoing uncertainty – RACGP
News
Experts have long predicted the coronavirus – and the lockdowns needed to curtail it – will lead to a long tail of mental health impacts.
Experts have cautioned that prescribing mental health medication for pandemic-linked issues should not be the default option.
Now those impacts can be quantified, with prescription rates of anxiety and depression medication rising by substantially in recent months, according to aggregated Outcome Health data from more than 1000 Australian general practices.Anti-anxiety drugs in particular have soared by up to 31%, suggesting uncertainties over health and financial impacts are taking their toll, while antidepressant prescriptions have also risen steadily, up by double-figure percentages (13–22%) over last year for each of the eight weeks ending 6 June.The trend has led experts to caution that prescribing mental health medication for pandemic-linked issues should not be the default option, with non-pharmacological interventions like exercise or relaxation techniques often tried first.‘We can see that whilst there is a steady increase in the use of antidepressants, there has been a marked recent increase in anxiolytic prescribing, most notably for diazepam,’ the Outcome Health paper on mental health impacts states.‘The trend
