Skip to content
You are here: Home | Data | Mental Health - Data

Mental Health - Data

Group of men chatting

 

What you told us

 

Impact Assessments

 

What the data tells us

Percentage of the population prescribed drugs for depression, anxiety and/ or psychosis, Midlothian and Scotland, 2010/11-2019/20

The percentage of population prescribed drugs for depression, anxiety and/or psychosis has increased gradually in both Midlothian and Scotland as a whole over the 10 year period up to 2020/21.  Around 16% of the population of Midlothian and Scotland were prescribed drugs for these illness in 2011/12, which had risen to 19% in 2020/21.

 

 

4.2% of people identified themselves as living with a mental health condition that had lasted or was expected to last 12 months. In the 2018 Health and Social Care Survey 23% of all respondents answered ‘no’ to the question ‘Do you have good mental wellbeing’ and 62% of staff responded that they did not feel Services make it easy for people to sustain good mental health.


17,680 people in 2019/20 (19.1% of the Midlothian population), were prescribed drugs for depression, anxiety and/ or psychosis. This has increased from 15.2% in 2010/11. The proportion of the Scottish population prescribed has also increased since 2010. For the most deprived SIMD (1) in Midlothian this rises to 23%.

Mental Health Admissions for Midlothian, NHS Lothian & Scotland (EASR per 100,000 population), 1997/98 – 2019/20 Mental Health admission rates declined in Midlothian, NHS Lothian and Scotland from 1997 to 2020. They have levelled out in recent years, with very little change since 2009/2010 except from in Midlothian, where admissions started to rise in 2019/20. At the start of the time period, admissions were substantially higher in Midlothian and NHS Lothian than in Scotland as a whole but Midlothian rates declined rapidly, dropping below national levels by 2003/04. Midlothian admission rates have more than halved over the time period, from 700 per 100,000 in 1997/98 to under 350 per 100,000 in 2019/20.

 

In 2019/20 there were 335 mental health admissions per 100,000 population in Midlothian. The rate of Midlothian patients with a psychiatric hospitalisation continues to be lower than the Scottish average.

The Covid-19 Pandemic has had an impact on people’s mental health. People have reported being more anxious, more worried about their mental health and about family and friends. People have also reported feeling lonelier.

Suicide

The figures in Scotland are a combination of two groups of causes of death; intentional self harm and events of undetermined intent. For some deaths it is straightforward to determine the intention of the deceased. For other types of death it is not. The convention in Scotland has been to include both types so that all suicides are captured. At a Midlothian level the number of events are quite small and therefore subject to quite wide fluctuation year to year so it is often better to combine years into 5 year blocks.

Over the last five years there have been an average of 12.6 probable suicides a year. This is above Scotland and Lothian. The Scottish average rate was 13.5 per 100,000 while Lothian was 13.8 and Midlothian was rate 14.9.
Compared to ten years ago there has been a 7% decrease in the rate. This is similar to Lothian but not as impressive as the decrease for Scotland (18%). However this hides substantial change between men and women.

Men – Midlothian has seen a 4% increase. This is higher than Scotland and Lothian rates - Scotland has decreased by 19%, and Lothian decreased by 4%.
The ScotSID report found that the bulk of deaths are men in their middle years with a strong emphasis on social isolation and economic inequality. Most people were in employment. A large minority had mental health and other needs but were not in contact with healthcare services.

Women - Midlothian has seen a 35% decrease. This is below Scotland and Lothian.
In terms of deprivation the more deprived intermediate zones in Midlothian tended to have a higher rate of suicide This is similar to national figures