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More Americans with mental health needs have been getting talk therapy in recent years. That's according to a new study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. And as NPR's Rhitu Chatterjee reports, it is the first time in decades that outpatient talk therapy has played a bigger role in mental health treatment than medications.
RHITU CHATTERJEE, BYLINE: For many years, since the late 1990s, the use of psychotherapy or talk therapy declined and then plateaued. But that trend changed between 2018 and 2021. The new study finds that the number of American adults getting outpatient talk therapy grew from 6.5% to 8.5%.
MARK OLFSON: So that's an increase from about 16 1/2 million to nearly 22 million people.
CHATTERJEE: Dr. Mark Olfson is a psychiatrist and epidemiologist at Columbia University and an author of the new study. While a majority of people getting therapy also use psychiatric medication like antidepressants and antipsychotic meds, the study also found that for the first time in decades, fewer people relied only on medication.
OLFSON: What we'd seen going all the way back to, like, the late 1980s, when Prozac first came on the scene and the other antidepressants like it - the SSRIs - followed, medications have assumed a more and more important role. Here, for the first time in many years, we're seeing that flip.
CHATTERJEE: In fact, Olfson says more people are getting a combination of medication and talk therapy. And when people start talk therapy, he says, they're more likely to stick to it.
OLFSON: One of the problems, historically, has been that sometimes people show up for one visit, and then they'll drop out prematurely.
CHATTERJEE: But in recent years, says Dr. Jessi Gold, people are more aware about what to expect from therapy. Gold is a psychiatrist and chief wellness officer at the University of Tennessee.
JESSI GOLD: So if we see an increase in talk therapy because people feel like they have things they want to talk about or could use the help, or help-seeking's more normalized, I think that's a great thing. And it might be, in part, what you're seeing.
CHATTERJEE: That's in addition to wider access to talk therapy through telehealth since the COVID-19 pandemic.
GOLD: Telehealth did increase access for people who might not have had any access to a therapist in their particular location or times.
CHATTERJEE: Despite the growing access to talk therapy documented in the new study, the most recent data from a national survey shows that only about half of Americans with any mental illness received any treatment in the year before.
Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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