As children develop and mature, learn new things and bear more responsibility, it is normal for them to experience stress, even occasional bouts of emotional distress, as they deal with their day-to-day challenges. However, the events of recent years have drastically changed their lives. New data suggests that the difficulties and concerns from the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with a number of social issues, have likely led to more cases of clinical depression among America’s teenagers. This is demonstrated by a sudden surge of antidepressant medication prevalence for this age group in 2021.
Increased use of antidepressant medication, especially among teenagers aged 13 to 19
Depression among the youth has been on the rise for a number of years. Evernorth’s monitoring of the utilization of antidepressant medications among children and teens since 2017 reveals a 28.0% increase in prevalence for children (aged 0 to 12) and a 41.1% increase for teens (aged 13 to 19). However, the prevalence among teens spiked from 2020 to 2021, during the first years of the pandemic, with a year-over-year jump of 12.6%, compared to an average annual increase of 7.8% from the previous years observed.
This analysis was a retrospective cohort study examining Evernorth’s pharmacy claims from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2021 for patients with either a commercial health plan or an individual and family health plan and with a prescription medication for depression. Data included 19,294,768 members of all ages and patients with depression was 591,142. Data for youth (13-19) sample is 1,938,973 members and patients with depression is 18,331. Data was limited to commercial carriers enrolled in all study years.