How many of my co-workers are on meds?
June 30, 2010 5:55 AM Subscribe
What is the best estimate for the fraction or percentage of the current United States America workforce taking prescription psychiatric medication?
I have no idea, but griphus's answer is a non-starter because it contains the fundamental assumption that the variables (taking psych meds) and (actively working) are orthogonal. I would guess that there is actually some covariance between medication and employment status: you would imagine that many severely mentally-ill people are unable to work despite being prescribed medication, and that some other people who suffer from mental illness find themselves at a disadvantage in the job market.
posted by kataclysm at 7:17 AM on June 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by kataclysm at 7:17 AM on June 30, 2010 [1 favorite]
http://www.infouse.com/disabilitydata/mentalhealth/
This has estimates for employment among the mentally-ill, as well as the percentages of the mentally ill who receive adequate treatment; you could get a really crude estimate by multiplying the two percentages; however, that again assumes that being mentally ill and employed is independent from being mentally ill and receiving services that include medication, and I would not make that assumption. In addition, these stats are for severe mental illness (meaning that probably many people who are on antidepressants or anxiety meds are not counted in the stats; presumably much more of these people are in the workforce).
You can figure out how many of your coworkers are mentally ill by looking up the incidence of each separate condition (depression, anxiety disorders, attention-deficit disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc.), attempt to find statistics about the percentage of each who are working (crude estimate: subtract the percentage who are receiving SDI), but it's going to be really hard to get any kind of an estimate of how many of them are receiving the treatment that they should be getting. (If your job offers good health insurance with mental health coverage, I would guess probably half to 3/4 of the mentally ill people you work with are receiving treatment; if your job offers no insurance, I would guess probably 10% to 1/4 of them are receiving treatment, but that doesn't have any data whatsoever to back it up.)
posted by kataclysm at 7:29 AM on June 30, 2010
This has estimates for employment among the mentally-ill, as well as the percentages of the mentally ill who receive adequate treatment; you could get a really crude estimate by multiplying the two percentages; however, that again assumes that being mentally ill and employed is independent from being mentally ill and receiving services that include medication, and I would not make that assumption. In addition, these stats are for severe mental illness (meaning that probably many people who are on antidepressants or anxiety meds are not counted in the stats; presumably much more of these people are in the workforce).
You can figure out how many of your coworkers are mentally ill by looking up the incidence of each separate condition (depression, anxiety disorders, attention-deficit disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc.), attempt to find statistics about the percentage of each who are working (crude estimate: subtract the percentage who are receiving SDI), but it's going to be really hard to get any kind of an estimate of how many of them are receiving the treatment that they should be getting. (If your job offers good health insurance with mental health coverage, I would guess probably half to 3/4 of the mentally ill people you work with are receiving treatment; if your job offers no insurance, I would guess probably 10% to 1/4 of them are receiving treatment, but that doesn't have any data whatsoever to back it up.)
posted by kataclysm at 7:29 AM on June 30, 2010
I think the more immediate difficulty is determining who is actually taking their medication as directed versus who is prescribed medication and not actually taking it, regardless of whether they participate in the labor force or not. There is so much psychiatric and other medications prescribed, unused and subsequently flushed into the water system in the Philadelphia area that traces of 56 different chemicals have been found in our tap water*. The total number of prescriptions written for psychiatric medications last year is pretty mind boggling and I don't think is necessarily reflective of actual medication usage but more of over prescription by profit seeking drug companies.
posted by The Straightener at 7:36 AM on June 30, 2010
posted by The Straightener at 7:36 AM on June 30, 2010
Ugh, leap of logic in the second paragraph, let me try again:
Look up the incidence of various classifications of mental illness in the general population (call this number X). Then look up how many people are working despite having each type of mental illness (subtracting the percentage of people with each disorder on disability from 100 percent is a crude estimate). Call that number Y. Don't forget to take into account the rates of comorbidity of mental illnesses (i.e. don't double-count people who have depression AND anxiety, instead subtract them from one disease pool). Multiply X * Y for each disorder and add them all up, and you will have the percentage of your coworkers who have a mental disorder. As to how many of them are on medication, that will largely depend on whether your job has health insurance.
posted by kataclysm at 7:36 AM on June 30, 2010
Look up the incidence of various classifications of mental illness in the general population (call this number X). Then look up how many people are working despite having each type of mental illness (subtracting the percentage of people with each disorder on disability from 100 percent is a crude estimate). Call that number Y. Don't forget to take into account the rates of comorbidity of mental illnesses (i.e. don't double-count people who have depression AND anxiety, instead subtract them from one disease pool). Multiply X * Y for each disorder and add them all up, and you will have the percentage of your coworkers who have a mental disorder. As to how many of them are on medication, that will largely depend on whether your job has health insurance.
posted by kataclysm at 7:36 AM on June 30, 2010
IMS Health tends to be the source of national prescribing data, but they'll make you pay for it unless you work for a major publication and they want to give it to you. It's also really difficult to figure out because they tend to measure numbers of prescriptions written or dollars worth of drugs sold and you can't tell how many people got those prescriptions or, sometimes, translate dollars into numbers of drugs and people taking them. I, for example, am on two different meds and get prescriptions several times a year. And you might not find me as "working" even though I freelance successfully enough to live in Manhattan.
The National Comorbidity Survey and NESARC (forget what it stands for) have lots of data on general population samples for prevalence of various disorders and prevalence of treatment uptake, including medication use. SAMHSA.gov may have useful data in its national household surveys of drug use which also look at comorbidity between drug use and mental illness and employment. Look for those on pubmed and I think many of the publications are free full text.
This is not easy to figure out, however. The other problem is that lots of people without mental illness take psychiatric meds-- antidepressants are used in chronic pain disorders and some digestive disorders, for example.
posted by Maias at 5:56 PM on June 30, 2010
The National Comorbidity Survey and NESARC (forget what it stands for) have lots of data on general population samples for prevalence of various disorders and prevalence of treatment uptake, including medication use. SAMHSA.gov may have useful data in its national household surveys of drug use which also look at comorbidity between drug use and mental illness and employment. Look for those on pubmed and I think many of the publications are free full text.
This is not easy to figure out, however. The other problem is that lots of people without mental illness take psychiatric meds-- antidepressants are used in chronic pain disorders and some digestive disorders, for example.
posted by Maias at 5:56 PM on June 30, 2010
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posted by griphus at 7:12 AM on June 30, 2010