Anxiety about Brexit may have triggered a manâs psychotic episode, according to a U.K. doctor who is warning that a countryâs political climate could have dire mental health effects.
Three weeks after a referendum determined in 2016 that the United Kingdom would leave the European Union, a man in his 40s was taken to hospital. His mental health had âdeteriorated rapidly,â according to the new case report . He had hallucinations, lost sleep and grew paranoid that people were spying on him.
âAt the hospital he was agitated, perplexed and confused, attempting to dig the floor with his hands to âburrowâ through the floor to âget the hell out of this place,ââ the report said. âHe found it difficult to reconcile with the political events happening around him.â
The man, who described his family as âmulticultural,â became increasingly worried about âracial incidents.â In a first-person section of the report detailing his perspective, the man said political parallels in the U.S. after Donald Trumpâs election added to the unease.
âThis was in the summer of 2016 and, as well as my own anxieties about Brexit, it was also a time when a friend of mine was experiencing immense anxiety about what was happening around him in the U.S. and we were talking together on social media about racial issues,â the report reads. That year, a flurry of xenophobic and racist acts were reported in the U.K. following the European Union referendum. In the U.S., the alt-right movement supporting President Donald Trumpâs campaign and eventual victory were drawing Nazi comparisons.
The manâs psychotic break appeared seemingly unexplained. While he had previously experienced a similar episode precipitated by work stress, that one was less severe, the report said. He had reported other pressures associated with family and work in 2016, but there was no family history of mental health problems, no history of substance abuse or significant health issues. He recovered quickly after he was given intramuscular lorazepam (a tranquilizer for anxiety) and prescribed olanzapine (an antipsychotic). The author of the report, Dr. Mohammad Zia Ul Haq Katshu, writes that while work and family stressors often impact mental health, the manâs episode makes a case that the political climate may play a significant role in some cases.
âPolitical events can act as major psychological stressors and have a significant impact on the mental health of people, especially those with a predisposition to develop mental illness,â he wrote.
This type of episode, called acute and transient psychotic disorder (ATPD), typically dissipates within a few months but can come on quickly within a few weeks of a trigger, according to the report. In this case, the manâs episode was three weeks after the EU referendum results were declared. Recent surveys confirm that political events may be a source of much stress. In the U.S., following Trumpâs election, about two-thirds (66 per cent) of respondents said the future of the country was a significant source of anxiety, according to the . Surveys in the U.K. about Brexit yielded comparable results about an . Earlier this year, a therapist in London said she was seeing an increase in patients . Similar mental health discussions are being had in the environmental arena in recent years as terms like âeco-anxietyâ and âclimate griefâ were coined in response to concerns about climate change. But much research still needs to be done to understand how politics and the environment affect our health.