Mental health medications are now one of the top two drugs consumed by post-secondary students, according to the director of the largest Canadian student health insurer.
Antidepressant use has increased at Canadian universities over the past decade, said Lev Bukhman, director of Studentcare Networks, Carleton’s new undergraduate student health plan provider.
“Over the past 10 or 12 years we have seen the patterns of usage on student health plans change,” Bukhman said.
“Twelve to 15 years ago, it was always that oral contraceptives were the number one category of drugs claimed on student health plans,” Bukhman said.
“Now we’ve seen that number one and number two are always antidepressants. I would say that the transition has plateaued and it is now the new normal that antidepressants are often the number one category,” he said.
Bukhman said this increase is partially because of the many antidepressants introduced onto the market approximately 12 years ago.
“New medication came onto the market that had fewer side-effects than the first generation in the 1980s had,” he said.
“We’re talking about things that deal with ADHD, anxiety, depression and stress as well as classical depression categories.”
“With all of the growth that has happened in enrolment, there has not always been the growth of a lot of infrastructure that supports student counselling and mental health services on campus [across Canada],” Bukhman said.
“[These] have not grown by 50 per cent in the way that enrolment has grown by 50 per cent in universities in the past 10 years.”
A total of $119,049 worth of antidepressants were claimed by University of Ottawa students in 2011 alone, and recent trends indicate that this number is still on the rise, according to CBC.
Carleton has experienced similar developments in recent years, according to Patty Allen, a mental health and wellness nurse educator at Carleton’s health and counselling services department.
Allen said her department has seen plenty of mental health patients accessing Carleton’s counselling services, which remains consistently full.
“Carleton developed a mental health framework, advertised, and trained staff and faculty on how to recognize and refer. That has, I believe, increased our numbers,” said Allen.
Another reason for the increased use of anti deperssants is the reduced stigma surrounding mental health issues, Allen said.
“For a lot of students it’s just stress levels [as well],” she said. “I think there’s a lot of reasons [for] stress. It’s academic, but also it can be a snowball effect if there’s a lot of personal stress such as family, relationships, and finances.”
One potential reason for the reduced stigma surrounding mental health issues on campus could relate to the establishment of Carleton’s student alliance for mental health (SAMH), which has operated now for three years.
“Just having a group like the mental health association . . . is going to reduce stigma,” SAMH recruitment executive Tanya Thomson said.
“Carleton was actually one of the first universities to come out with a mental health agenda that mandated having a group like ours. I think things like that are really [pushing] mental health to the forefront of the university,” Thomson said.
Thomson said the organization urges those who come forward with mental health concerns to take advantage of counselling options provided by Carleton in students’ tuition fees.
She said she thinks using antidepressants should only be one component of treatment.
“Much like the use of contraception, it’s one factor that doesn’t speak to sex education as a whole. I don’t think that antidepressants speak to anxiety entirely either.”
