The research uses data from Our Future Health, the world’s largest mental health research resource.
An ambitious partnership
Funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) since its inception in 2020, Our Future Health is an ambitious public, private and third sector partnership to build the UK’s largest health research programme.
Beyond the published paper on inflammatory disease and mental health, Our Future Health has also shared further insights into mental health from their cohort of 1.8 million volunteer participants.
Insights into mental health
The risk of depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety, among people living with autoimmune conditions was found to be nearly twice (28.8%) that of people without those conditions (17.9%).
People aged between 18 and 29 years old were 10 times more likely to experience moderate to severe symptoms of depression than the older age group (25.8% to 2.4%).
A similar pattern can be seen in anxiety. With every increase in age group, the rates of moderate to severe anxiety symptoms decrease.
Participants with a household income less than £18,000 were over four times more likely to have reported symptoms of moderate to severe depression in the last two weeks than those with an income above £100,000 (28.8% versus 6%).
Highest among people unable to work
Symptoms of moderate to severe anxiety were highest among:
- people unable to work due to sickness or disability
- people being on paid leave, for example, parental leave
- unpaid carers
- unemployed people
In total, 50.7% of people who were unable to work because of sickness or disability had moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety in the two weeks before answering their questionnaire.
This compared with 24.5% of unpaid carers and 21.0% of unemployed people. 9.6% of people in paid employment or who are self-employed experienced moderate or severe symptoms of anxiety.
Visit the Our Future Health website for more information and data tables.
Further information
About Our Future Health
Our Future Health is a collaboration between the public, charity and private sectors to build the UK’s largest health research programme, bringing people together to develop new ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases.
Our Future Health is committed to the highest standards, policies and processes that protect participants’ confidentiality, while maximising the opportunity to help researchers to tackle serious diseases.
Volunteers’ data is de-identified and held securely in trusted research environments that meet strict security criteria. Our Future Health data and samples are only available to registered researchers conducting health research for the public good and is strictly controlled through an access process. All researchers will be held to the same standards.
Our Future Health is a member of the UK Health Data Research Alliance, the independent alliance of leading healthcare and research organisations establishing best practice for the ethical use of UK health data for research at scale.