But where pills are sought to compensate for what society has failed to provide, Britain reaches for the prescription pad far more readily. And, crucially, the heaviest of that prescribing is concentrated in the UK\u2019s most deprived communities.<\/p>\n
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Health Gap \/ Sundhedskl\u00f8ften<\/a> is a collaborative series from The Conversation UK and Denmark\u2019s Videnskab.dk exploring what the two countries can learn from each other when it comes to health and wellbeing.<\/em><\/p>\n From cycling and alcohol to inequality, healthcare and everyday habits, the series looks beyond hospitals and medical treatment to explore how culture, politics and society shape the way people live \u2013 and how healthy they are.<\/em><\/p>\n If you look purely at drugs prescribed to prevent disease, the stereotype of the overmedicated<\/a> Briton falls apart.<\/p>\n Take heart disease. Around 13% of the Danish population<\/a> are prescribed statins to lower cardiovascular risk. In the UK, the figure is nearly identical: the British Heart Foundation estimates 14 to 15% of adults take them.<\/p>\n This pattern holds for polypharmacy (taking multiple drugs regularly), too. Around half<\/a> of all Danes aged 75 and over take five or more medicines a week; in England, the figure for the same age group is 51%<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, a retired Dane and a retired Brit are taking roughly the same number of pills for chronic health conditions. Does this undermine the idea that Denmark prevents disease through lifestyle while Britain over-medicates? Not entirely.<\/p>\n Zoom out and the picture changes. In England alone, 1.26 billion prescription items were dispensed in 2024-25<\/a> \u2013 roughly 22 items per person, a 4% rise on the previous year. The equivalent Danish figure works out at around 13 items per person<\/a>.<\/p>\n The UK government\u2019s own reviews<\/a> suggest around 10% of items dispensed in English primary care are overprescribed \u2013 meaning a medicine that isn\u2019t needed, is no longer needed, whose harms outweigh its benefits, or that the patient would prefer to swap for a non-drug alternative.<\/p>\n So, if the two countries prescribe heart and blood pressure medications at similar rates, what\u2019s driving Britain\u2019s excess in volume? The answer lies in the drugs most directly tied to pain, anxiety and distress.<\/p>\n The UK prescribes antidepressants at a rate well above the average across OECD countries<\/a>, a club of mostly high-income nations. In England last year, over 92 million antidepressants were dispensed to nearly 9 million patients<\/a> \u2013 roughly one in six adults. <\/p>\n In contrast, Denmark is the only country in Europe to have successfully reduced its antidepressant consumption in recent years<\/a>, with a 4% decline between 2010 and 2020.<\/p>\n The story is similar for painkillers. In 2019, the UK had the highest overall opioid prescribing rate in the world<\/a>. Danish opioid use has fallen by more than a third since 2010<\/a>.<\/p>\n These are the medicines whose volume responds most directly to the conditions of people\u2019s lives \u2013 used to treat chronic pain, mental distress and social isolation. Researchers<\/a> and the UK Health Security Agency<\/a> have linked rising prescribing of this kind to widening social and economic disadvantage. It is in these drug classes, rather than in cardiovascular disease or diabetes medicines, that the gap between Britain and Denmark opens up.<\/p>\n This national divergence is mirrored within the UK itself. Conditions like heart disease are more common in deprived areas, driven by higher rates of smoking<\/a>, obesity<\/a>, diet<\/a> and polluted air<\/a>, so it makes sense that more heart medicines are prescribed there too.<\/p>\n But the bigger gap \u2013 one that heart disease alone can\u2019t explain \u2013 is in medications for pain, mood, anxiety and sleep<\/a>.<\/p>\n Antipsychotics are dispensed nearly three times as often<\/a> in the most deprived parts of England, compared with the least deprived. Opioid prescribing is roughly twice as high<\/a> in the poorest areas, with nine of the ten highest-prescribing regions in the north of England.<\/p>\n Sleeping pills, anti-anxiety medications and nerve pain drugs<\/a> are similarly concentrated in deprived populations. Public health officials explicitly link this dependence on prescription medicines to poverty. <\/p>\n Some researchers call this prescribing for \u201cdiseases of despair\u201d<\/a>. The trend aligns with a spike in suicides and alcohol- and drug-related deaths concentrated in these same communities over the last decade.<\/p>\n The cultural difference extends beyond the doctor\u2019s office and on to supermarket shelves. In Britain, painkillers like paracetamol and ibuprofen are ubiquitous in corner shops and petrol stations. Co-codamol, a codeine and paracetamol combination, is the country\u2019s second most dispensed painkiller, with millions of packs sold over the counter<\/a> every year.<\/p>\n In Denmark, supermarket sales of basic painkillers are sharply restricted<\/a>, and only a single weak codeine combination is available, kept behind pharmacy counters.<\/p>\n In the UK, this easy access is often framed as \u201cpatient autonomy\u201d or \u201cself-care culture\u201d. But this framing obscures who bears the harm. When Britain restricted paracetamol pack sizes in 1998, overdose deaths fell by 43% and liver transplants caused by paracetamol poisoning dropped by 61%<\/a>.<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s higher prescription rates aren\u2019t just about medicine \u2013 they\u2019re rooted in how society is structured. Denmark\u2019s lower use of drugs for pain and psychological distress can\u2019t easily be explained by clinical guidelines alone \u2013 it points to the protective effect of stronger social foundations.<\/p>\n With less inequality<\/a>, a stronger safety net and an environment built to support people\u2019s wellbeing, Denmark simply has fewer of the conditions that hardship and poor surroundings tend to cause.<\/p>\n In the UK, the opposite is true. Over a decade of austerity, widening wealth inequality and fraying public health infrastructure have had profound consequences. Poverty, insecure housing and precarious work don\u2019t just make life harder; they are reliable predictors of chronic distress and long-term illness.<\/p>\n
\nPrescribing for despair<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/753308\/original\/file-20260811-50-bfbd8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&rect=0%2C277%2C3838%2C2158&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip\")
\n Yau Ming Low\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe illusion of autonomy<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/753310\/original\/file-20260811-50-xsb8x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip\")
\n Eddie Jordan Photos\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTreating the symptoms of inequality<\/h2>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.com\/content\/282446\/count.gif\")
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