Mental to Dental Connection

Background

Mental health diseases like depression and anxiety have plagued humans presumably since we achieved sentience, and lately it seems like the mental health crisis in America is getting worse and worse. Everyone blames this rise on something different; social media, the pandemic, tumultuous politics, or just the dramatics of younger generations. No matter where the blame is placed, statistics show that the rise in the number of diagnoses is real. Almost all mental health diseases show growth, but anxiety and depression have skyrocketed (ADAA). Even before the COVID 19 pandemic, anxiety was at an all time high, as shown in the figure below. 

 Fig. 1: These graphs show the number of people diagnosed with anxiety in 1990 (left) and 2017 (right). The United States shows a drastic increase. Darker areas indicate higher numbers of anxiety diagnoses. Image sourced from Our World in Data.
Continue reading “Mental to Dental Connection”