We already know that mood disorders are running rampant in America – but it may be a lot worse than anyone thought.

I was alarmed when I read the numbers in Psychological Science: Half of all young adults suffer from anxiety disorders, 41 percent of them experience major depression, and a third are drinking too much.

These numbers double previous estimates.

It doesn’t take much to put two and two together on this one. These disorders are on the rise as our diets and lifestyles are at their worst. There’s a direct relationship, and I’ll tell you more about that in a moment.

But right now, I’m more concerned by this survey. Assuming the new numbers are accurate, and I have no reason to doubt them yet, the problem here is not the stats. It’s how they’ll be used – to push antidepressants.

Armed with this new information, Big Pharma could try to market these sometimes nnecessary drugs to “at-risk” people who show no signs of mental illness. They’ll tell you it’s a protective measure, but you and I both know their real dream is to sell these meds to every single one of us.

Antidepressants are some of Big Pharma’s most profitable drugs – and some of the most dangerous. Already, 27 million Americans take them, and now the drug lords will be working overtime to make sure the other 270 million of us join them, or at least have a chance to take one of their other equally bad mood meds.

They want us to believe that mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety can strike anyone out of the clear blue sky, and the only possible solution comes in a pill bottle.

But mental disorders don’t strike suddenly and for no reason. Some folks think that stress, relationship problems, or the loss of a job – situations we all face, all the time – can cause these conditions, and in some cases that may be true.

For the most part, however, these mental illnesses are caused by nutritional and hormonal deficiencies. Our diets aren’t just making us fatter, they’re literally rotting our brains, and that’s especially true of our younger generations who’ve been raised on nutrition-free processed foods.

Keep eating that way into adulthood – as many do – and you’ll find your brain practically starving. No wonder so many people end up mentally ill.

And there is not a single drug – not even one – that can fix it.

So if you’re battling mental illness, work with your doctor to find the real solution. Eat right and avoid carbs. In some cases, you may need specific nutrients or hormones to help correct the deficiency – the lack of essential fatty acids, methyl donors, tryptophan and the B vitamins are often at the heart of the problem.

The most important thing is that you give your brain the food it needs – not a drug that will hurt it even more.

Not everyone is on an antidepressant these days – but it sure seems like it.

A shocking new study finds that some 10 percent of us take these meds now – more than 27 million Americans.

The study, published in August in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found that while 13 million Americans took these drugs in 1995, that number doubled in just a decade. By last year, a stunning 164 million prescriptions were written for these meds, worth $10 billion.

It’s frightening.

Part of the problem is the off-label use of these drugs. Big Pharma tries to get as many people as possible on these meds, and for reasons far beyond their approved use. In fact, a University of Georgia study in 2006 found that some 75 percent of people on antidepressants were given these meds for off-label uses.

So while it’s bad enough that depressed people are taking these drugs unnecessarily, it’s far worse when they take these meds for completely different conditions, such as insomnia or pain.

Making matters worse, most docs have proven to be particularly poor at spotting depression. As I mentioned just last week, doctors miss the key signs at least half the time and incorrectly diagnose it in healthy people 20 percent of the time.

Not only that, but these meds are some of the worst of the lot, with nasty side effects that I’ve warned you about before.

But there’s a much larger problem here, and it’s about how doctors treat patients today. Or maybe I should say how they don’t treat patients. They treat symptoms.

I’d like to say it’s lazy medicine, but there’s more to it than that. Most doctors simply don’t know better, and it’s because of how they’re taught.

This is what happens when the medical schools and professors are bought and paid for by Big Pharma, and its army of drug reps is allowed to wander the once-sacred halls of academia.

Now, the entire nation is paying for it, with millions upon millions of us being given these dangerous and powerful antidepressants, whether we need them or not. Many of these drugs contain fluorine, a powerful oxidizing agent that’s been linked to brain damage and degeneration.

There are right ways to get yourself healthy and win that battle with depression. It’s often as simple as getting more trypophan, essential fatty acids, vitamin B6, or vitamin B12.

Too bad most doctors don’t know this – because they never learned it in the first place.

You’d think the most basic task of a doctor would be to identify what’s wrong with his patients.

But too many doctors can’t, and new research shows the problem is especially bad when it comes to recognizing the signs of depression.

The study, published in July in Lancet, found that doctors miss real cases of depression half the time, and incorrectly diagnose it in healthy people nearly 20 percent of the time.

So you have half of all depressed people fighting this condition with no help at all, while the rest are taking powerful and dangerous meds. Not only that, but millions of people who aren’t even depressed are taking those drugs, too.

That means if you take a random group of 100 Americans, 25 of them have taken or will take drugs for a depression that only 10 of them have – while 10 more people are walking around, undiagnosed, quietly battling depression on their own.

And that’s a battle you can’t win by yourself.

Not that the help most doctors provide is much better. I’ve written extensively about the problems with antidepressants and the real solution in my book “The Body Heals, Second Edition.” I’ve also looked at some of the problems with these drugs right here in House Calls, most recently in June.

Doctors today need to be a little bit of everything. Sure, there are specialists who treat specific conditions like depression, but the reality is that many people either don’t have the coverage, extra money or time to go see one.

That leaves it up to the family doctor, who must have a little bit of everything in his medical bag, and a little bit of everything in his education.

Too bad this generation of doctors is ill-prepared to take on these extra roles. Years ago when I took my sabbatical to study about the overlooked science for how our body heals, I was shocked to find that medical educations have been dumbed down so much in recent decades that many doctors are prepared to do little more than match a symptom to a med.

When it comes to mental health, clearly there are still people who are too embarrassed by the idea of depression to seek help.

But as this latest study shows, too many doctors don’t know what to do when these folks hop up onto the examination table. What they don’t realize is that they often have the power to treat depression safely, effectively and without dangerous and powerful meds.

But you can’t even begin that process if you can’t identify the problem in the first place.

And you end up with what we have today: 27 million Americans on antidepressants, whether they need them or not.

There’s only one winner here, and it’s not the doctor or the patients. It’s the folks who are selling the meds.

I’ve already given you plenty of reasons to avoid antidepressants.

And now, I’ve got one more.

New research shows that these powerful meds can cancel out the effects of the most popular cancer-fighting drugs used by women who have suffered from breast cancer.

Researchers looked at women who took tamoxifen, a cancer-fighting drug that can cut the risk of a cancer recurrence in half, and compared their medical histories against women who took it along with certain antidepressants.

They found that the cancers returned in 7 percent of the women who took just the cancer drug – but 14 percent of the women who took both the cancer drug and certain antidepressants.

Doctors presented their research at a American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in May.

Antidepressants are some of our most over-prescribed drugs. Some women take them to help deal with the symptoms of menopause, because hormone treatments are generally not considered safe after breast cancer.

But there are alternative treatments, and I would suggest that all women – not just breast cancer survivors – speak with their doctors about their options, whether they’re dealing with depression or menopause.

Not only are these meds too dangerous, they don’t work all that well either.

I’ve helped a lot of my patients win their battles with depression, and antidepressants have never been the preferred approach.

When I do prescribe them, it’s a temporary solution while we work on finding and treating the underlying condition. In addition, I closely monitor my patients who take these drugs, because they can affect your body in so many ways – most of them bad.

Some of them contain fluorine, the most powerful oxidizing element on the planet – and the results can be disastrous when it gets a free ride into your brain thanks to these drugs.

So I already have big concerns over antidepressants. But what really worries me is what we still don’t know about them.

Big Pharma has gotten many of these meds rammed through the system like a freight train, and as a result we’re always finding out more about their possible side effects and interactions.

Today, we’ve learned that they may cause a recurrence of breast cancer. But what will we learn tomorrow?

Get off these meds as soon as you safely can, and when we do find out – you won’t have to worry.