Diagnoses of major conditions failing to recover since the pandemic. Diagnoses of depression were 27.7% lower than expected compared with pre-pandemic trends. Diagnoses were also lower than expected for asthma (16.4%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, 15.8%) and osteoporosis (11.5%).
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/diagnoses-of-major-conditions-failing-to-recover-since-the-pandemic
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Depression is the most severely impacted, with almost a third fewer diagnoses than expected compared with pre-pandemic trends.
The King’s College London study is the first to evaluate whether diagnosis rates have recovered after emerging from the pandemic. Published today in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), it uses anonymised data from over 29 million people in England.
The pandemic had an unprecedented impact on healthcare systems around the world, leading to abrupt decreases in diagnosis rates for a wide range of diseases.
Of the 19 major conditions analysed, diagnoses of depression were 27.7% lower than expected compared with pre-pandemic trends. Diagnoses were also lower than expected for asthma (16.4%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, 15.8%) and osteoporosis (11.5%).
The study also identified differences in how diagnosis rates recovered across ethnic and socioeconomic groups. While dementia diagnoses recovered to pre-pandemic levels for individuals of white ethnicity and those living in less deprived areas, they remained lower than expected among other ethnic groups and in more deprived communities.
https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-086393.short
Given the significant challenges people face accessing primary care today, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if people were unable to get care from GPs at all until they are _so_ unwell that they becomes disabled by it. It’s easier to submit an online disability application than it is to see a GP today.
10 years ago I was unwell and was dismissed by my GP on multiple occasions. I stumbled into a walk in crisis centre next to the surgery who sat me down, listened to me cry for an hour, and wrote a strongly worded letter to my GP. I was referred for treatment the following week.
I was lucky. The treatment allowed me to avoid becoming “disabled” and now I work and contribute. I raised almost £10,000 for that charity because of what they did for me that day.
If it was today, I don’t think I would have been so lucky.
Is it possible this is just because older and/or weaker people died in the pandemic so we just have a healthier baseline?
There is technically nothing wrong with the title(article title) and heading, but it feels very misleading/bad.
>Diagnoses of major conditions failing to recover since the pandemic
>There has been a lasting and disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on diagnosis rates for conditions including depression, asthma and osteoporosis.
After reading that it felt like this was a terrible thing due to the wording, but it’s actually lower rates as explained in the reddit title. I guess this is a good example of editing titles.
>“This is difficult to reconcile with other indicators of mental health need. Disability benefit claims for mental health conditions have increased substantially over the same period, suggesting these declining diagnosis rates may not reflect improving mental health.”
Yeh, there is no other possible explanation than that…
>Diagnosis rates may be influenced by increasing pressures on the NHS, meaning it is taking longer for people to be formally diagnosed. It is also possible that more people are accessing mental health support without receiving a formal diagnosis of depression. Following a national drive to expand access to psychological therapies, referrals to NHS Talking Therapies services increased by nearly two-thirds between 2013 and 2024, with self-referrals accounting for almost 70% of all referrals.
I think this is an overall good thing. In the past doctors were like oh you are down, you must be depressed and have low serotonin levels, so we’ve only talked for 2 minutes but let me give you a SSRI, which has potentially some very serious negative effects like suicide, violence, some permanent side effects and withdrawal symptoms that might be so bad you can never get off. Oh and SSRIs barely beat placebo and there are no long term(2+ years) studies on them.
Nowadays we realise depression is an umbrella conditions that covers lots of underlying conditions. If someone is down due to environmental conditions then a drug might not be the best bet at treating it. Some consider depression a serious medical condition so environmental causes are normally classed as something else and probably require completely different treatments. We know that SSRIs probably aren’t treating an underlying biological condition and have negative effects. We have a better understanding of better ways to diagnose and treat depression.
>mental health services also need to involve themselves in supporting their patients to maintain or improve their physical health, in relation to smoking, diet, obesity, and exercise
[https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004532&utm_source=pr&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=plos006](https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004532&utm_source=pr&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=plos006)
>University of South Australia researchers are calling for exercise to be a mainstay approach for managing depression as a new study shows that physical activity is 1.5 times more effective than counselling or the leading medications. [https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2023/exercise-more-effective-than-medicines-to-manage-mental-health](https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2023/exercise-more-effective-than-medicines-to-manage-mental-health)
Great work from the authors here! They make a really important point about the drop in depression diagnoses in their discussion – barriers to access probably play a big part in the observed changes (e.g. the 7:59am scramble for a GP appointment), but it’s not the whole story – it’s also gotten easier for people to skip the formal diagnosis and antidepressant prescription pathway.
>It is also possible that individuals with symptoms of depression may be accessing services without their diagnoses being recorded in primary or secondary care records. After a national drive to expand access to psychological therapies, referrals to NHS Talking Therapies services increased by nearly two thirds between 2013/14 and 2023/24 (from 1.1 million to 1.8 million referrals, respectively), with self-referrals (ie, without necessarily needing to consult a healthcare professional before referral) constituting 69% of all referrals.[40](https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-086393#ref-40) Recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), updated in June 2022, emphasised the importance of therapy based treatments over antidepressants for new diagnoses of less severe depression.[41](https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-086393#ref-41)
It’s expensive to get medical care so many people don’t. Also, many people with medical or potentially unknown conditions perished during covid, which might have led to a decrease in diagnosing these conditions today.
Is it possible that people with these illnesses disproportionately died during the pandemic? Older people in particular are affected by COPD and osteoporosis and are often susceptible to depression.