Publication type
Book Chapter
Series Number
No. 3
Series
Northern exposure: COVID-19 and regional inequalities in health and wealth
Authors
Publication date
March 13, 2023
Summary:
In this chapter, we examine regional trends in the ‘parallel pandemics’ of mental health, hospital pressure, and long COVID. For mental health, we use the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) to assess the impact of the pandemic on self-reported mental health in the North. We analyse inequalities in GHQ-12 within the North in terms of sex, ethnicity, income, and age. In addition, we explore the use of mental health services before and during the pandemic by analysing anti-depressant prescribing data – a proxy indicator for the presence of depressive disorders.1 Finally, we examine regional inequalities in hospital pressure by comparing differences between the North and the rest of England in terms of the proportion of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients, as well as regional variations in the scale of reductions in non-COVID-19 hospital activity during the pandemic.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.51952/9781447369233.ch003
Subjects
Link
https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/northern-exposure
Notes
Open Access
#557752