Mclean
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Antidepressants: the people behind the prescriptions
It has been widely reported that antidepressant prescribing increased during the pandemic, but what do we know about the people behind the prescriptions, where do they live and which antidepressants are they taking?
I’m very proud of the high antidepressant use in Norfolk. If you consider that maybe only 50% people with depression go to the GP, and few of those give enough clues to get accurately diagnosed, then Norfolk’s high use is probably only a small percentage of those appropriate for antidepressants. And, despite what NICE says, the evidence for psychological interventions is still poor (the use of waiting list controls instead of placebo is methodologically invalidating) and, although they may be flawed, antidepressants work in most people, are available at a moment’s notice and there’s no waiting list. I’d say the other areas are under-prescribing rather than those 3 areas over-prescribing.
Colleagues may be interested in seeing how much antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs consumption in the UK compare to other 64 countries:
https://www.the-lancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(21)00292-3/fulltext