A new report finds a range of evidence that mental health has worsened since the pandemic.
This is consistent with rising disability benefit claims for mental health.
Since the pandemic, the number of 16- to 64-year-olds in England and Wales on disability benefits has risen by 0.9 million to 2.9 million, with 7.5% of 16- to 64-year-olds now claiming.
Around 0.5 million – over half – of this rise has come from claimants whose main condition is a mental health problem.
The report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies found that across a range of surveys, there has been a steady increase in reported mental health problems: in the mid 2010s, around 8–10% of working-age people said they had a long-term mental health or behavioural condition; in the latest data, that figure has risen to 13–15%.
Working-age ‘deaths of despair’ have increased since the pandemic. After adjusting for demographic changes, deaths attributed to alcohol, drugs and suicide were up 24% – around 3,700 deaths – in 2023 compared with pre-pandemic levels for 15- to 64-year-olds in England and Wales.
There is a strong link between these deaths and mental health issues, so this rise indicates an increase in the incidence of (severe) mental health problems.
These deaths were the main driver of overall increases in working-age mortality in 2023, which stood 5.5% above pre-pandemic levels (early data for 2024, which do not yet include cause of death, indicate a fall-back to 1.5% above pre-pandemic levels).
In December 2024, 2 million people were in contact with NHS mental health services, including people waiting for care.
Among areas with comparable data over time, the number of people in contact with services increased by 36% between 2019 and 2024. The number of people in England with prescriptions for antidepressants has also risen 12% since 2019. These trends will be at least partly driven by attempts to increase access to mental health care but are also consistent with the patterns observed in surveys, benefits data and deaths data.
Eduin Latimer, a Research Economist at IFS and an author of the report, said:
‘The rise in the number of people on disability benefits is a key motivation for the government’s upcoming Green Paper. A range of evidence suggests that mental health across the population has worsened, and – consistent with this – more than half of the rise in disability benefit caseload comes from claims for mental health and behavioural conditions. As well as obviously bad news on their own terms, mental health problems may also be contributing to the rising benefits bill.’
Iain Porter, Senior Policy Adviser at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said:
‘This is clear evidence of a deterioration in mental health in the population, which goes some way to explaining rising health-related benefit claims. Greater openness about mental health has helped many people to live with conditions which were once hidden, but the rise in deaths of despair also shows that reducing stigma does not eliminate the most serious consequences of rising mental ill health. This trend is real and growing, and we need our government to look carefully at the health of the nation, rather than relying on benefit cuts to fix the problem.
‘We await the government’s forthcoming Green Paper to see whether it will truly address the underlying causes of increasing poor health, whether it will help more people stay in work when they are struggling with their health, and whether it will make the move into work safer for people who feel at risk of losing support.’
