Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

HEALTH

Almost one in ten in Denmark prescribed antidepressants

New national data shows around 9 percent of people in Denmark made use of a medical prescription for antidepressant medicine in 2021.

Published: 28 February 2023 16:59 CET

Almost one in ten in Denmark prescribed antidepressants

Just under one in ten people in Denmark used a prescription for antidepressants in 2021. Illustration photo: Nastya Dulhiier on Unsplash

The number comes from a Statistics Denmark analysis on use of antidepressant medicines.

Some 12 percent of women used a prescription for antidepressants at some point during 2021, according to the analysis. The figure for men was 7 percent.

That corresponds to around 280,000 women and 158,000 men.

The higher number among women than men has been a constant element in each year covered by the analysis since it began in 2011.

“We know for example that women go to the doctor more often than men, so that can mean they also more frequently get a prescription for antidepressants,” Statistics Denmark special consultant Fenja Søndergaard Møller said in a press statement.

The difference between men and women also increases with age, while the proportion of people who take antidepressants generally increases with age and is highest for persons over the age of 80.

But the difference is not necessarily evidence that younger generations have better mental health, the statistics agency writes.

“The difference could be due to factors including a difference approach to treatment in young people compared to older people. That could include a greater tendency towards young people being offered a different form of treatment to antidepressants,” the analysis states.

“At the same time, young people are less common users of other types of medicine while older persons often have more regular contact with health services,” it states.

The total number of people who are prescribed antidepressants has not increased since 2011. The level was lower in 2021 than in 2011 for all age groups, at just over 10 percent in 2011 compared to 9 percent two years ago.

READ ALSO: Experts call for Denmark to spend billions on mental health services

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

'Some towns had zero births': Greenlanders sue Denmark over forced contraception

Henriette Berthelsen was separated from her family at 11 and forced to wear a contraceptive coil, a trauma she buried until she and 142 other Greenlandic women sued the Danish state.

“I’ve suppressed so much,” Berthelsen said. “I had an IUD (intrauterine device) fitted nine times since the age of 13, according to my medical records,” the psychologist and activist explained with poise and dignity.

“Luckily — if one can say luckily — they fell out,” she said, her voice cracking, at her home in a Copenhagen suburb. “I remember being in so much pain.”

Now 66, Berthelsen is one of the 143 Greenland Inuits who have sued the Danish state for violating their rights during its forced contraception campaign from the 1960s to 1980.

Some 4,500 fertile women were forced to undergo the procedure, often without their or their family’s consent.

Denmark carried out the campaign to limit the birth rate in the Arctic territory, which had not been its colony since 1953 but was still under its control.

Berthelsen’s parents never consented to her coils.

At the recommendation of the state, she was sent to Denmark for a year as a young girl to learn Danish and then to a Danish boarding school in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, far from her hometown of Qeqertarsuatsiaat in southwestern Greenland.

One day, “there was a sign that said that all the girls from the boarding school had to go to the infirmary”, she said.

The IUDs kept falling out, she recalled, holding a photograph of herself from the time — a young girl with long dark plaits.

‘Never contradict a Dane’

For a long time she didn’t tell anyone about her ordeal, remembering what her mother had taught her: ‘Never contradict a Dane’.

For many of her classmates, the experience had a devastating impact.

“In my class there were several girls who were never able to have children,” she said.

Berthelsen herself went on to have two kids.

She is now campaigning to get the Danish state to pay for therapy for the victims living in Denmark.

Greenland already pays such benefits to those living in the territory.

Ebbe Volquardsen, a lecturer at the University of Nuuk, said the women were seeking justice now because the time was ripe.

“It simply takes time for marginalised groups, including Greenlanders within the Danish realm, to develop an awareness of systemic inequality and the ability to articulate it as a problem,” she explained.

One of the victims spoke out in the media several years ago about the trauma she experienced.

A podcast series by Danish public broadcaster DR in 2022 then revealed the extent of the campaign.

“It’s important that the Danish state takes responsibility,” said Berthelsen.

“Some things happened as a result of colonialism” — like “deciding, instead of the people (concerned), whether they are too many or too few, committing a genocide, committing violence and offences against young girls”, she fumed.

Historian Soren Rud told AFP: “In the context of the 2020s, the authoritarian elements of the campaign stood out as a shocking example of how the colonial and post-colonial situation affected the interaction between Greenlanders and Danes.”

‘Big success’

The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Mads Pramming, said one of the documents presented as evidence in the case is a copy of a 1971 review by a doctor extolling the “success” of the policy.

“There were 9,000 fertile women and, in just four years, they inserted an IUD in half of them. So 4,500. And the population dived enormously,” he said.

“Some towns had zero births during that period. After four years they concluded (it was a) big success.”

The large majority of the plaintiffs — the oldest of whom is now 82 — were left with lasting scars.

“Of the 143, about 50 of them had their uterus removed and were not able to have kids, and all of them suffered” physically and mentally, he said.

“Their own testimony is going to be the hardest evidence in the case.”

A fire destroyed many of the women’s medical files but that’s unlikely to change much.

“I don’t think the doctor would put in the medical file that he inserted this IUD in a 12-year-old girl with her crying and being held by two other adults,” Pramming said.

In October 2023, 67 of the plaintiffs filed claims for compensation from the Danish state of 300,000 kroner ($42,000) each.

“All of the requests for compensation will be evaluated by (us),” the health ministry told AFP in an email.

The case comes as Denmark and Greenland are re-examining their past relationship in a historic parliamentary committee.

In addition, researchers have opened a probe specifically into the forced contraception campaign.

Its conclusions are due in mid-2025.

Url copied to clipboard!