Austerity is driving us to suicide, depression and causing soaring rates of drug use and HIV

Austerity reduced access to medicines and health care in Europe and U.S



10,000 suicides and a million depression cases can be blamed on austerity

In Greece, HIV rates increased 200% since 2011 because of budget cuts

Greece had first malaria outbreak for decades due mosquito spraying cuts

Five million Americans lost access to health care during recession

In Britain, 10,000 families are now homeless because of austerity budget



Austerity is driving suicide, depression, and the spread of infectious disease

Austerity is devastating the health of people in Europe and North America by driving suicide, depression, and the spread of infectious disease, according to new research.



It is also reducing access to medicines and care which is further affecting people’s health, the study suggests.



The authors, Oxford University political economist Dr David Stuckler and Dr Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist at Stanford University, said their findings show austerity is seriously bad for health.



In a book to be published this week, the researchers say that more than 10,000 suicides and up to a million cases of depression have been diagnosed during what they call the ‘Great Recession’ and its accompanying austerity across Europe and North America.



They also claim that in Greece, moves like cutting HIV prevention budgets have coincided with rates of the AIDS-causing virus rising by more than 200 per cent since 2011.



They suggest that the 50 per cent youth employment rate has also increased drug abuse which has further increased the spread of HIV.



The study also revealed that Greece experienced its first malaria outbreak in decades following budget cuts to mosquito-spraying programmes.



The researchers added that more than five million Americans have lost access to health care during the latest recession, while in Britain, some 10,000 families have been pushed into homelessness by the government's austerity budget.

‘Our politicians need to take into account the serious - and in some cases profound - health consequences of economic choices,’ Dr Stuckler told Reuters.

‘The harms we have found include HIV and malaria outbreaks, shortages of essential medicines, lost healthcare access, and an avoidable epidemic of alcohol abuse, depression and suicide,’ he said.



‘Austerity is having a devastating effect.’



The researchers claim that the youth employment rate has also increased drug abuse which has further increased the spread of HIV

Previous studies by Dr Stuckler have also linked rising suicide rates in some parts of Europe to biting austerity measures, and found HIV epidemics to be spreading amid cutbacks in services for vulnerable people.

But Dr Stuckler and Dr Basu said negative public health effects are not inevitable, even during the worst economic disasters.

Using data from the Great Depression of the 1930s, to post-communist Russia, and from some examples of the current economic downturn, they say financial crises can be prevented from becoming epidemics - if governments respond effectively.

As an example, they say Sweden's active labour market programmes helped the numbers of suicides to fall there during its recession while neighbouring countries with no such programmes saw large increases in suicides.



‘Ultimately what we show is that worsening health is not an inevitable consequence of economic recessions. It's a political choice,’ Dr Basu said.



This is not the first study to suggest that austerity can affect people’s health.



Researchers at the University of Alcala in Madrid found that it actually improved the health of many people in Cuba during the early 1990s.

They discovered that food and fuel shortages in the country caused the average citizen to lose 11lb and that death rates from heart disease and diabetes had fallen considerably.

