New figures show that the use of anti depressants in England has more than doubled.
More than 70million lots of antidepressants were given to patients struggling with their mental health in 2018, up from just 36m in 2008.
The data revealed the NHS last year handed out more prescriptions overall than ever – dishing out 1,108,683,483 scripts.
The figure doesn’t include those handed out in hospitals or privately.
Overall in 2018, £8.8 billion was the cost of prescriptions dispensed in the community. A decrease of 3.7% (£336.6 million) from £9.2 billion in 2017.1.1 billion prescription items were dispensed in the community. An increase of 0.3% (2.9 million) from 1.1 billion in 2017.
Three types of antidepressants are now among the 20 most commonly prescribed medications.
Sertraline, citalopram and amitriptyline are all now among the most taken drugs in England – a total of 42.4million of them were prescribed last year.
And the number of the antidepressant sertraline hydrochloride packs prescribed saw nearly a seven-fold rise between 2008 and 2018 – from 2.1m to 14.8m.
