MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS: The trend is inevitable given modern lifestyles, but young people tend to seek medical help more than older people, an official saidBy Wu Liang-yi and Liu Tzu-hsuan / Staff reporter, with staff writer
The number of people under the age of 30 in Taiwan taking antidepressants increased 16.1 percent in 2020 from a year earlier, the National Health Insurance 2020 Gender Statistical Report found.
The number of people taking antidepressants has been increasing since 2011, and reached 1,468,716 in 2020, up 5.1 percent from 2019, said the report, which was released in May.
The number of women using antidepressants always far exceeds that of men, it said.
The growth rate stabilized after 2017, but a year-on-year increase in people taking antidepressants can be seen in all age groups, especially those under the age of 30, it
Children who drink three or more sugary drinks per day have cavities twice as often as those who do not, the Ministry of Health and Welfare found in a survey of oral health among children and teenagers.
The survey was the ministry’s first to include the effects of “hand-shaken” drinks from to-go beverage stalls on the health of underage people as young as six years old.
The results showed a clear correlation between consumption of sugary beverages and oral health, the ministry said.
Using data from 10,670 children gathered by the Association of Family Dentistry, researchers found that children who have three hand-shaken