In This Issue

The percentage of Americans using psychotherapy remained stable between 1998 and 2007, but as outpatient mental health treatment expanded to more people, the proportion receiving psychotherapy shrank from 16% to 11%. Two large surveys of U.S. households also revealed that patients who received psychotherapy made fewer visits over time. Olfson and Marcus (CME, p. 1456) report that the rate of combined psychotherapy-drug treatment also fell, while the proportion of patients treated with psycho-tropic drugs only rose from 44% to 57%. In his editorial (p. 1419), Benjamin Druss examines forces underlying the trend away from psychotherapy and notes new laws and initiatives that could counter it.

Ratings of depressive and anxiety symptoms, dissociation, and epilepsy-like phenomena were higher for young adults subjected to verbal abuse by their peers between ages 4 and 18 than for those who received minimal verbal abuse. Males assessed by Teicher et al. (CME, p. 1464) reported more verbal abuse than females, and exposure during the middle school years appeared to be the most consequential. Verbal abuse by peers was also related to white matter abnormalities in the brain. The editorial by Frank Putnam (p. 1422) describes commonalities among various forms of childhood adversity, which might help in finding treatments.