The understanding of mental health has accelerated over the past decade, with the stigma slowly fading away. In the past year alone there has been a substantial shift with the government directly addressing the scale of the issue through making a £5 Million budget available to mental health charities as well as launching their Every Mind Matters Campaign.

The Every Mind Matters campaign encourages adults to be more aware of their mental health and helps them discover simple steps to look after their mental health and wellbeing with the free NHS-approved online tool, which helps people build an action plan to deal with stress and anxiety, boost their mood, improve their sleep and help them feel more in control. The campaign saw so much attention that the website went down on the day it launched, believed to be due to the number of hits.

Through this tool it was discovered that 59% of 36-45-year-olds noticed their mental health deteriorating during the Covid-19 global pandemic. It is also thought that 1 in 4 people in the UK within this age range has experienced a mental health problem of some kind at some point throughout the year.

Here at Talking Medicines we have utilised Medsmart®, one of our many data collection methods to pull statistics on the prevalence of mental health conditions and the use of mental health related drugs. The data was extracted from a pool of thousands of individuals within the 36-45-year-old age bracket and the findings are worrying:

• 40% of all medication logged through Medsmart from this age bracket are Mental Health Related

• 32% of all medication logged are related to depression

• 68% of all medications logged are related to anxiety

• 3 of the top 5 medication brands logged are mental health related

• The main co-med is for Gastric reflux, a common side effect from taking anti-depressants

Our data highlights and reflects the findings from the NHS. The figures even show that the problem may be much more widespread than initially thought, showing the importance of the campaigns and funds that the NHS has put in place this year.

If you have experienced any mental heath issues, know that you are not alone and there is a place to go to reach-out: Every Mind Matters