Summary
This study in the British Journal of General Practice aimed to examine trends in prescribing for anxiety in UK primary care between 2003 and 2018. Anxiolytic drugs are a group of medications used to relieve anxiety. The authors analysed data from 2.5 million adults to determine prevalence, incidence rates and treatment duration for prescriptions of any anxiolytic, and also for each drug class.
The authors found that, between 2003 and 2018:
- prevalence of any anxiolytic prescription increased, driven by increases in those starting treatment, rather than more long-term use.
- incident beta-blocker prescribing increased over the 16 years, whereas incident benzodiazepine prescriptions decreased.
- long-term prescribing of benzodiazepines declined, yet 44% of prescriptions in 2017 were longer than the recommended four weeks.
- incident prescriptions in each drug class have risen substantially in young adults in recent years.
They conclude that increases in incident prescribing may reflect better detection of anxiety or increasing acceptability of medication. However, they also caution that prescribing approaches may cause unintended harm, as some prescribing is not based on robust evidence of effectiveness and may contradict guidelines. They highlight that there is limited evidence on the overall impact of taking antidepressants long term.
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