Mental health is not insulated from public life. Denis Campbell reports on a UK study linking successive shocks — the Brexit vote, pandemic lockdowns, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the 2022 mini-budget — to increases in population-level psychological distress that did not simply disappear when the headlines moved on.
Researchers examined annual responses from 87,857 people aged 16 and over in the UK Household Longitudinal Study, spanning 2009 to 2024. They used a 12-question mental-health screening measure to track changes around five events. The sharpest immediate shifts followed the Brexit referendum and the first Covid lockdown; other shocks were associated with more gradual rises. The researchers found that distress had already been climbing and remained elevated after the latest event studied.
The article translates the changes in screening scores into equivalents of people seeking a GP’s help for depression — roughly 120,000 for the Brexit result and 900,000 for the first lockdown. Those are comparisons meant to convey scale, not a count of newly diagnosed people or proof that any one event caused a particular person’s illness.
This is also a story about capacity to absorb a shock. Centre for Mental Health chief executive Andy Bell points to insecurity, isolation and years of austerity that left fewer buffers. The Guardian reports sharply increased demand on NHS mental-health services. If the conditions producing distress persist, care needs to be available long after the event itself has passed; asking individuals to become more resilient cannot substitute for material security and functioning services.