Daily Dose: Anxiety in America

Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

On May 12, 2023, we reported on results from an annual poll conducted by the American Psychiatric Association.

The poll

The annual poll was conducted among 2201 adults from April 20-22, 2023.

Overall, 37% of US adults reported feeling more anxious now than they did 1 year ago, an increase from 2022 when 32% of adults reported the same. Also, 70% of respondents said they were anxious about keeping themselves or their families safe. Although this percentage is lower than what was reported during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it is 6% higher than in the past 2 years.

Also, the results showed that 68% of adults were anxious about keeping their identity safe, 66% were anxious about their health, 65% were anxious about paying bills and expenses, 59% were anxious about climate change, 50% were anxious about the opioid epidemic, and 45% were anxious about the impact of emerging technology on daily life.

Adults were also asked several questions regarding mental health treatments involving previously banned substances, including cannabis, psychedelics, and ketamine. Approximately half of respondents said they were familiar with the treatments and 43% were unfamiliar with the treatments. Half of respondents said they would be likely to consider a mental health treatment involving cannabis, while a majority reported they are unlikely to consider a treatment involving psychedelics (59%) or ketamine (56%).

Two-thirds (68%) of adults said that children and teenagers experience more mental health issues than they did a decade ago. Additionally, more than half of parents reported concerns about their children’s technology use (59%) and mental state (55%), and 31% reported having difficulty scheduling appointments for their children with mental health professionals.

Most adults believed that mental health impacts physical health (78%), and that untreated mental illness has a significant negative impact on families (78%) and the economy (64%).

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