Preliminary results from the ‘Crisis Impact’ project, which studies the effect of the economic crisis on Portugal’s mental health, further found that the consumption of antidepressant and anxiolitcs also rose last year alongside the number of more serious mental health problems.

The study, by José Caldas de Almeida, President of the Lisbon Institute of Global Mental Health, found that the prevalence of serious mental health problems rose from 1.8 percent to 6.8 percent from 2008 to 2015.