Most Americans turn to addictive behaviors during crisis: survey

An estimated 77% of Americans are engaging in addictive behaviors to cope with mental health issues — often in spite of efforts to find effective clinical therapies.

The GeneSight Mental Health Monitor study, conducted by Myriad Genetics in Salt Lake City, Utah, counted several potentially high-risk behaviors among those used to cope with anxiety and depression, including alcohol use, drug use, gambling, food consumption, binge-watching media, oversleeping, excessive exercise and partying.

Notably, even those who have actively sought mental health care are turning to the aforementioned habits to cope as a result of medication failure or other ineffective treatments.

And nearly all those surveyed — 94% — agree that these addictions could also be covering up underlying mental health issues.

“Many of my patients have struggled with depression and/or anxiety but failed to find a treatment that made them feel better. So, they resorted to alcohol, drugs or destructive behaviors to soothe themselves, as these offered short-term relief,” Dawn Johnson, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner at the Indiana Center for Recovery in South Bend, said in a news release.

“However, this behavior resulted in worsening mental health and destruction of their lives.”

Two-thirds of survey participants with anxiety or depression have gone through a trial-and-error process of finding a medication that works for them. Unfortunately, 45% of the patients for whom meds didn’t work admitted to falling back on the aforementioned unhealthy behaviors to manage their illness.

For example, 77% of respondents diagnosed with depression or anxiety agreed that drinking alcohol solo is an addictive and unhealthy coping behavior, despite the fact that 41% of them keep up the unhealthy habit, while just a quarter of those who heavily drink alone acknowledged that they might have a problem.

Other respondents diagnosed with depression and anxiety confessed to sleeping too much or too little (70%), withdrawing from social activities (64%), binge-watching TV or movies (49%) and skipping work, school or household responsibilities (48%) to cope with psychological stress.

More than half of depression or anxiety patients, 58%, who were told they have a problem believe that proper mental health treatment helped alleviate any concerns about addiction.

At the Indiana Center for Recovery, Johnson uses genetic testing to determine how her patients might react to various medications prescribed for mental health conditions, such as not being able to metabolize the drugs properly, not experiencing any symptom relief or experiencing unwanted side effects.

“The GeneSight report reassures them that we’re not just throwing medications at them, we’re actually customizing their plan based on their genetic makeup,” she explained.

“Mental health and addiction often go hand-in-hand,” said Morgan Freas, a senior medical science liaison with Myriad Genetics. “Yet the stigma associated with admitting mental health challenges is often greater than escaping into substance or behavioral abuse.”