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The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted mental health, health-related behaviours such as drinking and illicit drug use and the accessibility of health and social care services. How these pandemic shocks affected 'despair'-related mortality in different countries is less clear. This study uses public data to compare deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide in the United States and the United Kingdom to identify similarities or differences in the impact of the pandemic on important non-COVID causes of death across countries and to consider the public health implications of these trends. Data were taken from publicly available mortality figures for England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the United States of America, 2001–2021, and analysed descriptively through age-standardised and age-specific mortality rates from suicide, alcohol and drug use. Alcohol-specific deaths increased in all countries between 2019 and 2021, most notably in the United States and, to a lesser extent, England and Wales. Suicide rates did not increase markedly during the pandemic in any of the included nations. Drug-related mortality rates rose dramatically over the same period in the United States but not in other nations. Mortality from 'deaths of despair' during the pandemic has displayed divergent trends between causes and countries. Concerns about increases in deaths by suicide appear to have been unfounded, whereas deaths due to alcohol have risen across the United Kingdom and in the United States and across almost all age groups. Scotland and the United States had similarly high levels of drug-related deaths pre-pandemic, but the differing trends during the pandemic highlight the different underlying causes of these drug death epidemics and the importance of tailoring policy responses to these specific contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hesitance and resistance to COVID-19 vaccination poses a serious challenge to achieving adequate vaccine uptake in the general population. Cross-sectional data from the early months of the pandemic indicates that approximately one-third of adults in multiple nations are hesitant or resistant to a vaccine for COVID-19. Using longitudinal data, we tracked changes in attitudes to COVID-19 vaccination during the pandemic. This is a quantitative, longitudinal design. Nationally representative samples of the adult general population of the Republic of Ireland (N = 1041) and the United Kingdom (N = 2025) were assessed for their attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination at three points from March to August 2020. Statistically significant increases in resistance to COVID-19 vaccination were observed in Irish (from 9.5% to 18.1%) and British (from 6.2% to 10%) adults. Resistance to vaccination has significantly increased in two European nations as the pandemic has progressed. Growing resistance to COVID-19 vaccination will pose a challenge to public health officials responsible for ensuring sufficient vaccine coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]