Comparison of Antidepressant and Antipsychotic Utilization and Expenditures in the U.S. Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population, 2013 and 2018

Excerpt

In 2018, an estimated 19.1 percent of adults in the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population experienced any mental illness in the past year, while an estimated 4.6 percent suffered from serious mental illness in the past year. In addition, an estimated 14.4 percent of youths aged 12–17 and 7.2 percent of adults experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year in 2018. Prescription antidepressants and antipsychotics are two types of drug therapies sometimes prescribed to treat mental illness. As more people use prescription antidepressants and antipsychotics, it is important for policymakers and researchers to understand changes in the utilization of these drugs as well as changes in expenditures for these drugs.

This Statistical Brief presents a comparison of prescription antidepressant and antipsychotic utilization and expenditures in the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population between the years 2013 and 2018. Estimates are based on the 2013 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS-HC) and the 2018 MEPS-HC. This Brief compares the number of people obtaining at least one prescription for an antidepressant or antipsychotic medication, total prescription fills, and total expenditures for those medications, as well as the average total, out-of-pocket, and third-party payer expenditures per fill. Estimates are presented separately for antidepressants and antipsychotics.

Only prescriptions obtained in an outpatient setting (retail and mail-order prescribed medicines) are included in these estimates. Prescription medicines administered in an inpatient setting or in a clinic or physician’s office are excluded. Expenditure estimates are presented in real dollars; estimates for 2013 are inflated to 2018 dollars based on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) price index (http://www.meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/about_meps/Price_Index.shtml). All differences between estimates discussed in the text are statistically significant at the 0.05 level unless otherwise noted.