Antidepressant use in England rose significantly compared to other prescription drugs in the wake of Britain\u2019s decision in 2016 to exit the European Union, according to new research released on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Debate over the merits of Brexit has dominated Britain\u2019s political discourse for more than two years, split families and communities and prompted panicked contingency plans from businesses in the event of a \u201cno deal\u201d with Brussels.<\/p>\n
But relatively little attention has been paid to the impact Brexit and the long-running uncertainty that\u2019s dogged the process – has had on the population\u2019s mental health.<\/p>\n
Researchers at King\u2019s College London looked at official monthly prescribing data for antidepressants for all 326 voting districts in England, comparing it with other classes of drugs in the run up to the June 23, 2016 referendum and the weeks that followed.<\/p>\n
Given that the Brexit result came as a surprise that ushered in \u201cconsiderable uncertainty\u201d over its effect on Britain\u2019s economy and society, the study authors wanted to see if that translated to greater antidepressant use.<\/p>\n
After calculating a \u201cdefined daily dose\u201d to ensure they could compare different types of drugs fairly, they found that after the vote the volume of antidepressants prescribed increased 13.4% relative to the other medicines studied.<\/p>\n
Although it was difficult to definitively tie the vote result to the rise in antidepressant use, Vandoros said the fact that the increase was relative to other forms of prescription drug was significant.<\/p>\n
\u201cA growing body of literature suggests that economic uncertainty can have negative effects on mental health,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Antidepressant use in England rose significantly compared to other prescription drugs in the wake of Britain\u2019s decision in 2016 to exit the European Union, according to new research released on Wednesday. Debate over the merits of Brexit has dominated Britain\u2019s political discourse for more than two years, split families and communities and prompted panicked contingency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47959,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47957\/revisions\/47959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}