Dr. Andrew Weil on health: what the evidence says · JRE #1213
SUBJECT: HEALTH
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
the word is that 25% of women between 40 and 50 are on antidepressants and 10% of adults in the country
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Weil, citing unspecified secondhand information ("the word is"), claims 25% of US women aged 40-50 and 10% of all US adults take antidepressants. CDC/NCHS data show overall adult antidepressant use running higher than 10% in most measured years: 13.6% of adults 20+ in the 2015-2018 NHANES survey and 11.4% of adults 18+ in the 2023 NHIS survey, so Weil's 10% figure understates the most recently measured national rates, though it is in the right range. For women, CDC data confirm markedly higher use than men and than the adult average, rising with age: 17.7% of adult women overall (2015-2018) and nearly one in four women 60 and older, the highest of any group measured, while women overall were at 15.3% and adults 45-64 (both sexes combined) were at 12.1% in 2023. No CDC dataset reviewed reports antidepressant use specifically for women aged 40-50, so the claimed 25% for that narrower band cannot be directly confirmed against an established figure; it is plausible that usage in this range sits somewhere between the mixed-sex 45-64 rate and the women-60-plus rate, but that is inference rather than documented data. Overall, the claim's direction (women, especially in midlife, use antidepressants at markedly higher rates than the general adult population) is well supported, but neither specific number matches an established CDC statistic precisely.