Data released today showed that one in six people in the UK were prescribed antidepressants before the first coronavirus lockdown and prescriptions for these medications have increased throughout the course of the pandemic. This comes as no surprise to me - I have spent much of my working life over the last year speaking to people who are extremely unhappy as a result of the current situation. Never the less, these figures are astonishing. Setting coronavirus aside for a moment, even before this crisis, one in every six of us were so unhappy that we felt the need to take medication to remedy this.
What does this say about the way we lead our lives? How have we developed a way of living where mental ill-health is so widespread?
Whilst these figures pose questions as to the way we live our lives, they pose equally important questions about the way we respond to these feelings. Here the coronavirus pandemic provides a useful lens through which to examine this.
Because of this pandemic we have all become isolated, we are no longer able to do many of the things we enjoy, many people have lost their jobs, many people have lost love ones, and all this whilst we are stalked by a deadly disease. Is it surprising that people are unhappy? Furthermore, does taking a pill undo or correct any of these stressors?
The current situation is extreme but we can see that many of the things that are causing us distress at the moment are actually quite prevalent in our normal lives. Loneliness is an epidemic, employment is frequently insecure, and so much of our attention is sucked away by social media that many people actually spend very little time doing things that they enjoy and that help them de-stress. Just like antidepressants won't make coronavirus go away, nor will they make any of these problems go away.
We need to look at our lives, both as individuals and as a society, and work out how we can make them happier. The answer is surely not to medicate ourselves just to enable us to cope with our lives as they are.
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