UCL study finds distress in Britain rose after Brexit, lockdowns and the cost-of-living shocks, and did not bounce back
Date of UCL’s news release; the paper appeared in BMJ Mental Health before it.
A study in BMJ Mental Health, led by UCL researchers, analysed psychological distress among 87,857 participants in Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, from 2009 to 2024. It found increases after the 2016 Brexit referendum, the Covid-19 lockdowns, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the 2022 mini-budget, and found that these increases persisted.
What happened
Participants answered a questionnaire on common symptoms of depression and anxiety. The researchers used quasi-experimental methods to estimate how distress changed around each event. The work was funded by Wellcome and carried out by researchers at UCL, Imperial College London and LSE.
Distress rose across the 2009 to 2024 period, and the rise accelerated from 2015. There was an immediate increase after the Brexit referendum and a larger one after the first lockdown. The pandemic’s effect diminished over time, but distress had not returned to pre-pandemic levels by 2024. Gradual increases followed the invasion of Ukraine and the mini-budget, both of which pushed up the cost of living.
People aged 16 to 34 saw the largest worsening: they had the lowest distress of any age group in 2009 and the highest after the pandemic. The pandemic’s impact was worse for women than men, and the referendum’s for people in more deprived areas. People who are long-term sick or disabled had consistently higher distress and the largest relative increases after the referendum and the invasion of Ukraine.
Why it matters
The study adds population-level evidence that social and economic conditions shape mental health, and that the burden falls hardest on groups already at a disadvantage. The authors argue that support should be in place in the communities likely to be hit hardest by future shocks.
The findings describe changes across a population, not the cause of any one person’s distress, and they are specific to the UK. Overlapping events make it hard to separate the effect of each one completely.
What happens next
The authors did not study positive events and suggest future work could look at them, for example the 2012 Olympics or policies that reduce discrimination.
Sources
- University College LondonHow political upheaval and the pandemic shaped UK mental health
- BMJ Mental HealthResearch paper