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Lifestyle Diseases Crippling The NHS Essay

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My question is to what extent are lifestyle diseases crippling the NHS? I chose this question as the NHS is constantly being attacked at the moment from cuts in expenditure to the amount of time it takes to get a GP appointment. Knowing that i wanted to do a report on the NHS I had to find a relevant topic that interested me as the NHS is such a large and complex organisation. I read a book called ‘Missing Microbes’ by Martin Blaser that talked about what he termed modern plagues such as Obesity which ignited my first interest in how obesity could affect an organization like the NHS. In my AS biology syllabus we talked about lifestyle diseases for a very short amount of time, but it intrigued me that these lifestyle diseases seemed to be the …show more content…

Depression effects 1 in 5 older people according to mentalhealth.org and is the most common mental health issue along with anxiety in the UK. Depression can’t be tested with X-rays or blood tests which can cause some people to look on it as trivial using lines such as ‘snap out of it’. As more and more people are being diagnosed with depression these comments are beginning to die down as we learn more about it. Depression has only recently been referred to as a lifestyle disease as there has never really been set causes for it. Nowadays social and economic circumstances have been linked to causing it and research has been done on social media use and depression with alarming results for teenagers.
Depression can be treated either with antidepressants such as serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors, therapy such as CBT or a combination of both. In an article in the independant the house of commons commissioned research on the cost of depression on the country. The NHS cost of treating depression was estimated at over £520 million a year. With £237 million spent on hospital care, £230 million on antidepressants, £46 million for doctors time and £9 million for outpatient

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