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SUMMARY:Explaining regional mental health prescriptions in England through
  deprivation and aggregate personality profiles - Andrés Gvirtz (King’s
  College London)
DTSTART:20240131T160000Z
DTEND:20240131T170000Z
UID:TALK210721@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Yara Kyrychenko
DESCRIPTION:In a given week\, one in five adults in England take antidepre
 ssants or medication for anxiety. Despite the large variance between regio
 ns\, there is little understanding of why certain regions have highly elev
 ated prescription levels. We adopted a psycho-social model to investigate 
 spatial prescription patterns by analysing 4.1 billion general\, 95 millio
 n anxiety-specific\, and 178 million depression-specific prescriptions iss
 ued in England between 2015 and 2019. We found three possible explanations
  for why certain regions have highly elevated mental health prescription l
 evels per capita.\nAreas with elevated levels tended to be: i) smaller ii)
  be contextually privileged (i.e.\, short distance to GP)\; but\, more int
 erestingly\, iii) affected by high work barriers. By then controlling for 
 these three explanatory variables and matching the prescription data with 
 England’s largest personality survey\, we found strong evidence for a po
 tential alternative to mental health drug prescriptions: social activity. 
 Indeed\, areas with large proportions of residents scoring high on the ext
 raversion activity facet displayed significantly less anxiety and depressi
 on prescriptions. This result offers new evidence and urges the adoption o
 f schemes similar to the social prescribing scheme recently piloted by NHS
  England in which doctors refer patients to non-medical treatments such as
  local volunteer groups (e.g.\, community gardens\, community businesses\,
  art and craft centres)\, reducing both costs and pressure on doctors.
LOCATION:Ground Floor Lecture Theatre\, Department of Psychology\, Downing
  Site\, Cambridge
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