Authors
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.