The same body recently recommended anxiety screening for all adults 64 and under. Naturally, screening almost the entire U.S. population for anxiety could increase the number of anxiety diagnoses by tens of millions, as an estimated 10 percent of Americans have but are unaware of their anxiety.
Though there’s nothing wrong with receiving a diagnosis, the reality is that 150 million Americans live in federally designated mental health professional shortage areas. This means it’s likely that many of those newly diagnosed patients will not have access to regular therapy, and will end up prescribed anti-anxiety medications as their only treatment—all without addressing the underlying reasons they actually have anxiety.
Anti-anxiety medications commonly retail for over $1,000 per month, which means 30 million new prescriptions could drive $360 billion or more in annual revenue for the pharmaceutical industry. The inevitable explosion of dangerously addictive anti-anxiety prescriptions, much of it on the taxpayers’ tab, should come as no surprise from an administration whose policies to “lower” prescription drug prices will actually make the industry more money and have Americans taking more pills than ever before. There can be little doubt we are living under the most pro-pharmaceutical administration in our lifetime.
Before COVID-19, only 11 percent of adults reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, compared to 40 percent during the pandemic, a number that had dropped only to 33 percent by June of 2022. These rapid shifts raise a question: what has changed during the pandemic that still endures today?
Two important variables stand out: social isolation, wrought by lockdowns, remote work, and crumbling social institutions; and declining physical activity resulting from not going outside, shutting down gyms, and spending every waking moment in front of a screen. We know social isolation and lack of exercise are major factors behind anxiety, so why are we medicalizing what we know to be a social, technological problem that inaccessible therapy and popping pills can’t possibly fix?
Americans’ anxiety is a natural response to the social and technological conditions to which they have been subjugated—that is, the Fauci- and Kushner-driven draconian lockdowns that divorced people from their daily human rhythms. As mobile, social animals, humans are not meant to live in small boxes, sedentary, isolated, and experiencing the greater world only through glowing boxes of light. But it’s far easier to appear like you’re “doing something” by prescribing a pill or mandating screenings than it is to ask Americans to make significant changes to their lives, or to consider that the failed actions to limit COVID-19 were vastly out of proportion to the threat.
Americans don’t need another pill. They need a means of building community. They need to take a break from their screens, and—for the love of God—to get some exercise.
Luckily, we already have solutions that would check all three of these boxes. One is team sports, which provide opportunities for men and women to escape from their screens, enjoy each other’s company, and be active at zero to low cost.
We already spend billions of dollars every year on well-staffed public recreation facilities for this very purpose. Sadly, in the wake of anti-police protests and under soft-on-crime policies, many localities have allowed these facilities to degrade into congregational spaces for drug use and vagrancy.
In Santa Monica, California, for example, public recreation facilities are littered with needles, which is no surprise given we use them to host publicly funded drug needle exchange programs. How are we to expect our adults, let alone our children, to use these facilities when one might be stuck by a used heroin needle, or have their car broken into during a game of flag football? Our parks, our baseball fields, our basketball courts should all be safe for our citizens to use without fear. Once these spaces are cleared of threats, people will naturally begin to use them again, as happened with the Venice Beach handball courts after the removal of transients and their property.
By taking back the public spaces that will help Americans relieve their anxiety, loneliness, and lack of exercise in the first place, we can avoid spending billions of dollars to hook millions of Americans on potentially dangerous medication. Americans don’t need more pills—they need spaces where they can gather, exercise, and play safely. They need sports.
Kenneth Schrupp is a Young Voices contributor writing on the intersection of business, politics and media. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the California Review, an independent journal.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
