Anxiety and depression symptoms in Connecticut have been at recent lows throughout 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau reported.
The share of residents in Connecticut who experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression disorders peaked between the end of October and the beginning of November in 2020, at 41.8%, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, which measures emergent economic and social issues like mental health symptoms and care.
State numbers line up with global research showing a significant uptick in mental health disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, the rates have declined. Between April 2020, when data was first recorded, and June 2024, when data was most recently recorded, the share of people experiencing anxiety or depression systems saw a net decline of more than 20 percentage points in the state.
While all states saw similar declines, Connecticut experienced one of the largest in the country. In April and May 2020, the state had the third-highest rate of people with anxiety and depression symptoms in the country, with 40.2% saying they'd experienced symptoms. At the time, it fell behind only Massachusetts and New York.
In May and June 2024, however, the state was only behind 16 others for the lowest rates of depression and anxiety.
Compared to other states, Connecticut saw the fourth-biggest percentage-point decline in the share of residents with symptoms. New York, Hawaii and New Jersey saw larger net differences in those with symptoms between 2020 and this year.
Between 2020 and 2022, the share of people in the state who sought some kind of treatment for mental health saw a slight uptick, coinciding with a general decline of symptoms in that same two-year time period.
From August 2020 to May 2022, the share of people who took prescription medication for mental health grew almost 7 percentage points. By May 2022, when data on mental health care was last recorded by the Census Bureau, over a quarter of state residents said they had taken medication for mental health in the last four weeks.
The rate of people seeking counseling and therapy also grew in those two years, albeit less, a net increase of 1.8 percentage points. Counseling and therapy were most widely used in February 2021, when 16.4% of Connecticut residents said they had used one of the treatment methods within the last four weeks.
People who sought out counseling and therapy have remained consistently less common than those who use prescription medication around the nation. In Connecticut, the share of people in the state who have received counseling or therapy was always lower than the share that took prescription medication for mental health.
The same was the case in most other states. But in Wyoming, North Dakota, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., a larger share of people used counseling or therapy than prescription medication for at least one of the survey periods, which were each approximately two weeks long.
Despite the uptick in those who used various forms of treatment, Connecticut still saw unmet mental health needs between 2020 and 2022.
The share of residents who said they needed counseling or therapy for mental health, but did not receive it, was greatest in the state in December 2020 and in April 2021, at 13.3% and 11.2% respectively.
During those two periods, the share of unmet need in Connecticut exceeded the share of unmet need in the nation as a whole. Otherwise, unmet need in Connecticut was lower than that in the United States from 2020 to 2022.
Unmet need could partly be due to a lack of mental health resources in parts of the state. In Connecticut, only 19.8% of the population's need for mental health professionals is met, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That puts the state in 37th place in the nation for mental health care resources. Forty-one different areas in the state are mental health professional shortage areas, meaning the ratio of residents with mental health needs to mental health providers doesn't meet a certain threshold.
The American Psychological Association also outlined a variety of other reasons that some Americans do not receive mental health services, including concerns about confidentiality and affordability.
In Connecticut, almost a quarter of adults who said they had unmet mental health care needs reported that it was due to cost reasons in 2018 and 2019, according to KFF.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.