Report: Anxiety, Depression Remain Top Challenge for Mental Health Patients

Among populations seeking mental healthcare, anxiety and depression continue to be the clinical domains with the most positive screens, according to new research published on Thursday by the proprietors of Blueprint, a mental health screener and assessment tool.

Findings in the company’s inaugural State of Mental Health Report, which are based on anonymized and aggregated data from more than 120,000 clinical assessments administered on the Blueprint platform, focus on most common stressors, symptoms, and diagnoses. Blueprint notes that its data is collected from individuals already receiving treatment for a mental health condition, which could lead to differing results from a study of the general population.

Patients enrolled onto Blueprint by their clinicians are given a 25-question assessment to screen for 15 clinical domains. While an official diagnosis must be made by a mental health professional, Blueprint is able to use population data to confirm which disorders for which patients may be screening positively for.

For the second straight year, anxiety (65%) and depression (59%) were the most common clinical domains with positive screens, followed by anger management (37%), sleep problems (33%), and somatic symptoms and obsessive-compulsive disorder (28% each). Blueprint shared in its report that generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder affect 3.1% and 6.7% of the general US adult population, according to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, but only 43.2% and 61.3% of those respective groups seek treatment.

Anxiety and stress remained the most commonly mentioned stressors mentioned by patients in 2021, however there was a 27.2% decrease year-over-year in the frequency of those terms being mentioned. Meanwhile, terms related to substance use and addiction saw a 69.2% increase from 2020 to 2021, with mentions in 3.7% of patient journal entries.

The Blueprint platform also uses a simple check-in for patients to self-report on 4 metrics relative to their mental health: positivity, energy, sleep, and social connectedness. Among the key takeaways from these assessments:

• Scores for all 4 metrics dropped significantly in 2020. While not back to pre-COVID levels, scores for each have had “a steady increase” in 2021.
• Younger patients more consistently have reported feeling more positive than older patients, with patients in the 19-25 age bracket having the biggest uptick in positivity. However, patients between the ages of 26 and 35 consistently reported leaning toward negative in terms of overall energy.
• Patients between the ages of 26 and 65 reported getting worse sleep than those younger than 26 or older than 65.

“We are in the midst of a mental health crisis, and while the 2020 pandemic both accelerated and intensified that—as very clearly reflected in our data—what we see in 2021 is that these patients are slowly but steadily beginning to bounce back across some key health and lifestyle metrics,” Blueprint CEO Danny Freed said in a statement. “When you look at patients who are more active in their mental health treatment plan, the outcomes are even more positive.”