Brexit and its many complexities have baffled many a seasoned political guru, including the politicians themselves, since the vote to leave the European Union in June 2016. One of the long-overlooked issues, more so than the border on the island of Ireland, is that of our mental health.

Leave campaigners have long extolled the virtues of Brexit in emotional terms, as a chance to unshackle the UK from its Brussels-shaped chains. In this timeline, the UK is cast as a plucky start-up business seeking to hustle its way around the world to secure trade deals with all and sundry. It is the rags-to-riches tale of recovery from imagined EU oppression that the likes of Boris Johnson and John Redwood would like to see the country unite around, where sheer elbow grease, British stiff upper lip, and mental fortitude get the job done.

All very well if you are in the financial sector, where there is paradoxically great opportunity from Brexit. Bloomberg published an exposé in June 2018, detailing how hedge funds were able to bet against the pound around the time of Nigel Farage’s initial concession defeat on referendum night, before raking in the millions when Leave emerged victorious later that night.

For many of the rest of us, Brexit has been a great source of angst, be it relating to the security of our jobs, preferred industry, or just a disillusionment at the general state of political play. Late in November 2018, it was revealed that antidepressant prescriptions had increased after the referendum, and while this was the mere continuation of an upward trend, a relative increase of 13.4% compared to other studied drugs is reported.

Another contribution to uncertainty has been the volatility of the housing market. There are conflicting views as to whether it is a good or bad time to buy. With interest rates at a low level of 0.75%, this may be a good time if you looking to take that first step on the housing ladder, yet if you don’t plan on staying very long or are already a homeowner, the prospect of a no-deal Brexit could lead to prices crashing by about a third, as warned by Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney. Either way, such uncertainty can make a shaky mental state even more uncomfortable. 

The suicide rate in Northern Ireland, as collected by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, is the highest of all the UK’s nations. For every 100,000 of the population, there were 16 recorded in Northern Ireland, compared with 13.9 in Scotland and 9.2 in England in published Office for National Statistics data.

Like any strand of health care, appropriate funding is vital if we are to tackle underlying causes and effects of poor mental health. Siobhan O’Neill, Professor of Mental Health Sciences at Ulster University, said in the News Letter last week: “Mental health rates are 25% worse in Northern Ireland what they are in the rest of the UK, but while England spends 11% of its health budget on mental health, Northern Ireland spends only 5-6%.”

Action Mental Health have already reacted with caution to Prime Minister’s recent announcement of £4 billion extra in funding to Northern Ireland’s health services as part of the much-publicised ten-year plan. Its chief executive, David Babington, said: “For too long, mental health has been the Cinderella service in Northern Ireland and the share of the health budget allocated to mental health has been steadily declining at a time of growing need. We would need at least an additional £130m each year for our mental services just to achieve parity with England. We need urgent action to reverse this trend.”

Considering Northern Ireland does not even have a functioning Executive in place to tackle these funding allocations, and one must wonder the effect that leaving the European Union, in any form, will have on these figures. Last year saw the EU investment of €7.6 million into the Co-operation and Working Together Health and Social Care Partnership. This cross-border project runs until 2021. Assuming the UK has left the EU by this stage, the question remains as to whether such projects are workable in their current form in the future. Many aspects of Brexit are leaving the UK running just to stand still, in terms of health budgets. It is vital that mental health receives more than warm words.

Northern Ireland has made great strides politically since the Good Friday Agreement, the last two years of impasse notwithstanding, yet one statistic underlines the need to fight complacency whatever the outcome of Brexit. Professor Michael Tomlinson of Queen’s University’s Sociology Department found the suicide rate had almost doubled since the Agreement, and that 45% of those recorded between 1965 and 2012 were in those latter 15 years of peace.

As we to and fro over the economic and cultural consequences of backstops and customs rules, we must not be distracted from the everyday mental effects. The preservation of peace on our streets and borders must not distract Stormont, and for now in particular Westminster, from the real but silent cry of those in need of mental respite.