More young people fill prescriptions for antidepressants in the Midwest than any other region of the U.S., according to research by pediatrician and researcher Kao-Ping Chua at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Chua, who directs the University’s Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center, set out to determine if young people across the country filled more prescriptions for antidepressants after COVID-19 began. To do this, he analyzed a dataset containing most antidepressant prescriptions picked up at pharmacies in the U.S. from 2016 through 2022.

He said he was surprised to discover that people between 12 and 25 years old filled more antidepressant prescriptions per capita in the Midwest than in any other region, both before and after March, 2020.

The data als

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