Experts warn: Lack of psychotherapy may have led to increased prescription of antidepressants

Since the beginning of the 2000s, the number of Swedes taking antidepressants has doubled in the country. About a million Swedes eat them. This is more than ever and Sweden is now one of the countries where the population takes the most antidepressant medicine in the world.

According to the National Board of Health and Welfare's national guidelines, care should primarily offer psychological treatment for mild and moderate depression. But several experts that SVT has talked to say that the demand for therapy is greater than the supply.

"Anxiety and depression of a lesser kind are common today and according to the recommendations, the first treatment alternative should be psychotherapy, but there is insufficient access to psychotherapeutic treatment," says Ing-Marie Wieselgren, psychiatry coordinator at SKR, Sweden's municipalities and Regions.

Public health scientist Andreas Vilhelmsson, a researcher at Lund University, is concerned about the development:

-We have a pressed primary care without sufficient resources and on it an even more pressed psychiatry.

He says that lack of resources and stress leads to doctors taking the prescription block instead of referring patients for psychological treatment.

- It takes time and costs more, although the guidelines dictate. Thus, there is a risk of treating symptoms only instead of identifying and treating the cause of problems, says Andreas Vilhelmsson.

Bo Runeson, professor of psychiatry at the Karolinska Institutet prioritizes drug treatment also sees a problem if choosing drugs before a more comprehensive treatment that includes both psychological help and family interventions.

- The result may be that you do not deal with the problems you have in your workplace or in your close relationships.

Do you think one reason for the high prescription of antidepressant medication is that people do not have access to other psychological treatments?

"I think that and that resource need to be expanded," says Bo Runeson.

The National Board of Health and Welfare does not know whether care is in accordance with the national guidelines.

- I cannot answer what it looks like with psychological treatment around the country because it is not data that we are currently getting into our patient register. Right now we only see diagnoses and drug treatment. But we should follow it up.

When will you do it?

- I do not know. But we all look forward to it, says Ylva Ginsberg, medical expert on adult psychiatry at the National Board of Health and Welfare.