More Americans going nuts now than ever before

SHOOT: And it is across the age spectrum - young, old. This is the consequence of playing with chemicals and popping pills. You feel better until it wears off and you feel worse. Probably you're getting more and more ioverweight and unhappy with yourself. And you should. You should be feeling happy because there is a real, a deserved cause célèbre.

clipped from news.yahoo.com They said 73 percent more adults and 50 percent more children are using drugs to treat mental illness than in 1996. Among adults over 65, use of so-called psychotropic drugs -- which include antidepressants, antipsychotics and Alzheimer's medicines -- doubled between 1996 and 2006. "Mental health has become much more a part of mainstream medical care," Glied said in a telephone interview. In 2006, they said 16 percent of adults 65 and older had some form of mental health diagnosis. About 7 percent of Americans with serious mental illness wind up in jail or prison every year, the researchers said. "New policies are desperately needed to reduce the flow of people whose primary problem is a mental disorder into the criminal justice system," wrote Glied and colleague Richard Frank of Harvard Medical School.