“About 70 percent of U.S. teens who have serious emotional or behavioral difficulties receive mental health services that don’t involve taking medications,” reports LiveScience, discussing a new comprehensive report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about what sorts of mental health services teens have been accessing.
“About 4 percent of all adolescents ages 12 to 17 had a serious mental health problem and had received nonmedication services in the previous six months,” reports LiveScience. The most common form of nonmedical service being accessed was counseling in schools. Some of these same teens were also accessing psychiatric medical services at the same time, though.
“There are many nonmedication mental health services that have evidence that they are effective for treating mental health disorders, so it is important to know whether teens are receiving services,” psychiatrist Dr. David Axelson told LiveScience.
Two-Thirds of US Teens with Mental Health Problems Get Counseling (LiveScience, August 27, 2014)
Use of Selected Nonmedication Mental Health Services by Adolescent Boys and Girls With Serious Emotional or Behavioral Difficulties: United States, 2010â2012 (NCHS Data Brief, Number 163, August 2014.)
How many of those also receive meds in another setting?
Report comment
And what are the non-medical psych services? A lot of what passes for “counseling” these days is nothing more than checking in and making sure they keep on their “medication.” Especially in the school setting, I’m betting most of them aren’t getting anything that I’d call counseling.
—- Steve
Report comment
It seems to be talking about “serious mental health” issues, and I’m quite certain such issues, according to psychiatry, absolutely require drugs for life. “Some of these same teens were also accessing psychiatric medical services at the same time.” What percent? I could have sworn I read that one of the new mental illnesses in the DSM5 was created specifically because the doctors had 7% of the American children diagnosed with bipolar, and they realized that was too many.
Report comment
And, historically, the two “serious mental illnesses,” schizophrenia and bipolar, were only found in about 1.5% of the population – 1% for schizophrenia and .05% for manic depressive illness (bipolar). Isn’t that right?
Report comment