Quarter of all adults in Derry on anti-depressants

The Derry City and Strabane District Council area has the highest level of anti-depressant prescribing in the North.

35,434 people here received anti-depressants in 2022/23, 23.4% of the population, compared to 19.9% of the population overall. The figure increased from 22.5% in 2021/22.

The statistics were revealed in the ‘Family Practitioner Services General Pharmaceutical Services Annual statistics 2022/23’ report published in June by the HSC’s Business Services Organisation (BDO).

The report also found women accounted for the majority of those who received anti-depressants in the North during 2022/23.

In addition, it said the proportion of the population receiving anti-depressants was highest in areas with higher levels of deprivation.

“In the most deprived quintile, anti-depressant were dispensed to 26.1% of the population. In the least deprived areas, the equivalent figure was 16.8%.”

Commenting on the BDO report, Sara Boyce, who works with the Participation and Practice of Rights (PPR) organisation on its New Script For Mental Health campaign, said the spend on anti-depressants had increased incrementally year-on-year for the last 20 years.

“By comparison, the budget for talking therapies is minuscule,” Ms Boyce said.

The New Script For Mental Health Campaign, which recently brought its ‘Travelling Poetry Apothecary’ to Holywell Trust’s Garden of Reflection in the city, is seeking to build “a progressive and inclusive social movement, bringing together everyone in our society who believes we need a better approach to mental health”.

Ms Boyce said: “New Script For Mental Health has been looking at the data on anti-depressants. We have found the budget for anti-depressants is about £13 million in an average year, however, the budget for talking therapies is under £2 million. The budget for anti-depressants is about six times that for talking therapies.

“We have a 10-year Mental Health Strategy, which was published in June 2021, but obviously we have no Executive, so the strategy has not been actioned.

“Essentially, it said we need to significantly increase investment in talking therapies. It recommended an immediate injection of half a million pounds to clear the waiting lists of people unable to access counselling, which is a huge issue.

“We asked the Department of Health if it had done this and we were told it had not injected any additional money into provision of talking therapies because, in the absence of an Executive, it could not. Ironically, there seems to be no issue around  increased spending on anti-depressants,” said Sara Boyce.

Ms Boyce said somebody needed to “take a serious grip” of the anti-depressant prescribing situation in the North.

She added: “Especially in Derry where it is like a perfect storm with all of the indicators around poverty, deprivation, and suicide, all of those indicators that make up a picture. And, in terms of responding to that, it seems to be medication first.

“New Script For Mental Health is saying this is not the way forward. We know where this has gone in the last 20 years, anti-depressant prescribing has increased fourfold. Where will we be in another 20 years if the Department of Health and the chief medical officer do not acknowledge this as a very serious public health issue.

“We need to now almost press pause and look at the overall picture. GPs will often say they have no alternative to prescribing anti-depressants because there are huge waiting lists for talking therapies.

“Somebody has to have oversight here and look at the big picture. What that is telling us is that almost a quarter of all adults in Derry had a prescription for anti-depressants in the last year, 23.4% of the population. This is a very serious public health issue for Derry.”

Ms Boyce said the figure for anti-depressant prescribing was higher in areas like Shantallow and Creggan.

“In areas of deprivation, the figure is more than 26% of the population,” she said.

“We have data regarding the Western Health and Social Care Trust, obtained by an FOI, which shows that between January and September 2022, only 857 people in the entire Trust were referred to its talking therapies programme. It is a rationed resource.

“So, approximately 1,000 people in the entire Western Trust were referred for talking therapies last year, versus 55,000 people (over 18s) on anti-depressants.

“Mark H Durkan who chairs the all party Stormont committee on Mental Health commissioned a paper from the Assembly’s research service to look at this issue. It found anti-depressant prescribing had quadrupled across the North in the last 20

“We need to move away from the medication only and medication first approach to mental health. New Script For Mental Health is a campaign of grassroots communities and people working on the frontline of mental health services.

"It is trying to open up a societal conversation around our current approach to mental health, which is overly medicalised and individualised.

“We want to move towards an approach that is more about healing and a holistic approach.”

Derry News asked the Western Health and Social Care Trust for a comment for inclusion in this article.