One in six U.S. adults reported taking a psychiatric drug, such as an antidepressant or a sedative, in 2013, a new study found. The new data comes from an analysis of the 2013 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), which gathered information on the cost and use of health care in the United States. An earlier government report, from 2011, found that just over one in 10 adults reported taking prescription drugs for “problems with emotions, nerves or mental health,” the authors wrote in a research letter published Dec. 12 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. But that report, from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, didn’t “provide information on which specific medications were more commonly used ” or on how long they were used, said authors of the new study, Thomas Moore, a senior scientist at the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit organization the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, and Dr. Donald Mattison, the chief medical officer at the Canadian consulting company Risk Sciences International. Moore and Mattison found that nearly 17 percent of adults in the U.S. reported filling at least one prescription for a psychiatric drug in 2013. Antidepressants were the most common type of psychiatric drug in the survey, with 12 percent of adults reporting that they filled prescriptions for these drugs, the study said. In addition, 8.3 percent of adults were prescribed drugs from a group that included sedatives, hypnotics and anti-anxiety drugs, and 1.6 percent of adults were given antipsychotics, the researchers found.