Covid, Brexit and Liz Truss mini-budget led to lasting decline in mental health, study finds

A new study has revealed that a series of events, including Brexit, Liz Truss's mini-budget and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have led to a significant and lasting deterioration in the mental health of the UK population over the past decade. Researchers from University College London utilized data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, which tracked 87,857 individuals aged 16 and older from 2009 to 2024, to analyze the impact of these "systemic shocks" on mental health.

According to the research, the Brexit referendum in June 2016 and the first Covid lockdown in March 2020 caused the most severe damage to mental wellbeing, with the latter having a particularly substantial impact. The first lockdown, during which Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged citizens to "stay at home," resulted in a much larger increase in psychological distress compared to the Brexit referendum.

The research team analyzed the General Health Questionnaire's GHQ-12 screening tool, which measures mental health, and found that the UK's decision to leave the European Union led to an increase in overall mental ill-health equivalent to around 120,000 more people seeking a GP's help for depression. The first Covid lockdown had an even more significant effect, with about 900,000 additional individuals visiting a family doctor due to developing symptoms of depression.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 resulted in approximately 15,000 more Britons per month seeking help for depression from their family doctor. After Liz Truss's disastrous mini-budget in September 2022, about 23,000 more individuals sought medical assistance for depression each month.

The study's findings, published in the journal BMJ Mental Health, highlight that psychological distress had been increasing in the UK from 2009 to a clinically significant degree, with the most recent event occurring in 2022. The heightened distress has persisted, failing to return to pre-2016 levels. The number of people in England utilizing NHS mental health services nearly doubled from 2.64 million in 2016-17 to 4.13 million in 2024-25, while the monthly referrals to NHS mental health services increased from 360,000 in April 2022 to 530,000 in July 2026, a 47% rise.