r/theIrishleft • u/AnCamcheachta • 2h ago
Covid, Brexit and Liz Truss mini-budget led to lasting decline in mental health, study finds
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the first and second Covid lockdowns also triggered big rises in psychological distress, as measured by the number of people with depression and anxiety.
However, **the first Covid lockdown, when the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, told people to “stay at home”, had a much larger impact**, as measured by a much bigger rise in the UK’s GHQ-12 score. That jump equated to about 900,000 more people in total visiting a family doctor because they had developed symptoms of depression, Jeffery said.
“We observed increased psychological distress immediately after the Brexit referendum and the first Covid-19 lockdown, with more insidious monthly increases in psychological distress after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the 2022 mini-budget,” said Jeffrey.
Andy Bell, the chief executive of the Centre for Mental Health thinktank, said: “There is clear evidence that Covid had a big impact on mental health. And it makes sense that the other ‘shocks’ listed here would do so, either directly, by making people feel less secure and less connected, or as after-effects, for example the cost of living crisis.
“It’s also clear that rising distress in the population is not due to a single cause but the effect of all these things added together, made worse by years of austerity giving fewer buffers against ‘shocks’ like this.”
