One In 8 Australians On Antidepressants Amid Over-Diagnosing - Watchdog

About three million Australians, or one in every eight, are on antidepressants due to over-diagnosing and over-treating of depression, a mental health policy watchdog said on Tuesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd April, 2019) About three million Australians, or one in every eight, are on antidepressants due to over-diagnosing and over-treating of depression, a mental health policy watchdog said on Tuesday.

"In the 2018 financial year, over 3 million Australians were prescribed an antidepressant, mainly SSRIs for depression or anxiety ... Perhaps Australia's extraordinarily high and rising rates of antidepressant use ... [may be explained by] our mental health system that is very sick, and hooked on a cycle of over-diagnosis and over-medication," PsychWatch Australia said.

According to the Department of Human Services' data provided to PsychWatch Australia, 12.2 percent of the whole Australian population were reliant on antidepressants in 2017-2018 with 101,174 children who are 0-17 years old. Most of those on antidepressants come from 48-57 year olds constituting 533,789 people. As for the age group from 18 to 27 years old, 328,879 people among them are on antidepressants.

PsychWatch Australia stressed that it was hard to determine what proportion of older Australians are prescribed antidepressants for depression or anxiety, and what proportion take them for other reasons. However, speaking about the other age group, it was likely that depression could be the main cause since the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked Australia as the second most depressed state in the world in 2017, the watchdog said.

At the same time the organization pointed out the fact that five largest Australian cities were all ranked in the 22 most liveable cities in the world. Moreover, the Australians themselves think that they are at the top of the world happiness rankings, according to the 7th World Happiness Report. Hence, the reason for overuse of antidepressants can be explained by the over-diagnosing of the depression that can be explained by the Australian media promoting claims that mental illness is massively under-diagnosed and under-treated in the country, PsychWatch Australia said.