Did psychotropic drug consumption increase during the 2008 financial crisis in Spain?

In a recent publication, Elena Arroyo and a group of Spanish researchers present their conclusions on 'Did psychotropic drug consumption increase during the 2008 financial crisis?'. They used the microdata from the face-to-face cross-sectional population-based Spanish National Health Survey (SNHS) for two periods: 2006–2007 and 2011–2012, considering both gender and employment situation.

Their conclusions are: "While the year of the financial crisis is not associated with the consumption of antidepressants nor sedatives, it has widened the gap in consumption differences between men and women. Although antidepressant use dropped, the difference in consumption levels between men and women grew significantly among the retired, and in the case of sedatives, risk of women taking sedatives increased in all groups except students."

The authors point out that the data set they analyzed is limited to information based on the response of surveyed individuals about either consuming or not antidepressants or sedatives. Hopefully, future studies will shed more light on a broader variety of psychoactive substances.

Open-access full text is available at: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/1/e021440?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=bmjopen&utm_content=latest&utm_term=25012019