A nine-year analysis across England found that daily weather patterns were associated with changes in mental health care utilization, providing evidence to help predict demand for services.
Study: The impact of weather on unscheduled healthcare utilization for mental health in the UK 2014-2022. Image credit: fizkes/Shutterstock.com
recent frontiers of psychiatryLee This study investigated whether daily weather patterns were associated with changes in the frequency of mental health-related unscheduled medical visits across England from 2014 to 2022.
Daily weather may shape mental health demand
Mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, and psychosis are a major contributor to the global disease burden, affecting a large portion of the world’s population. These disorders not only reduce quality of life but also increase demands on the health care system and are predicted to significantly increase economic costs. Therefore, identifying the factors driving variation in mental health-related healthcare demand is important for effective public health planning and resource allocation.
Environmental and meteorological factors have long been thought to influence mental health and well-being, and many studies have linked meteorological variables, particularly temperature, to a variety of mental health outcomes. However, much of this research focuses on vulnerable populations such as older people, women, and young people, or on the effects of extreme weather events.
As a result, little is known about how changes in daily temperature, sunlight, and rainfall affect the mental health and help-seeking patterns of the broader population. Emerging evidence suggests that even routine, non-extreme weather can impact psychological distress, symptom severity, sleep, and use of mental health services, but most previous research has focused on specific clinical diagnoses or acute outcomes rather than broader health care utilization.
Evidence regarding sunshine and rainfall is particularly limited and inconsistent, making it difficult to predict how prevailing weather patterns will affect demand for mental health services. Addressing these gaps may help improve public health planning and mental health resource allocation.
National surveillance traces weather and mental health contacts
This study investigated how daily weather conditions influence mental health-related unscheduled healthcare utilization across England, based on national syndromic surveillance data collected from 2014 to 2022. Advanced statistical models were used to assess the short-term effects of temperature, sunlight, and rainfall, accounting for nonlinear, delayed, and regional patterns.
Anonymised and aggregated contact data from three national syndromic surveillance systems managed by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) formed the basis of the analysis. These data included NHS 111, out-of-hours general practice (GP OOH) services and emergency departments (ED). Contacts were grouped by day and region using the patient’s or provider’s postal code, and age group and gender were recorded to enable stratified analysis.
Meteorological variables include daily minimum and maximum temperatures from HadUK-Grid (UK Grid Climate Observation), precipitation, and sunshine hours from Met Office MIDAS (Meteorological Agency Integrated Data Archive System).
Weather patterns reveal subtle changes in medical demand
Researchers analyzed over 4.6 million mental health contacts recorded through NHS 111, emergency department (ED) and out-of-hours general practice (GP OOH) services over a nine-year study period. NHS 111 accounted for the highest number of contacts, mostly adults aged 15-44, with a slightly higher incidence of women.
When researchers examined the relationship between weather and health care utilization, temperature showed a modest but nonlinear association. NHS 111 calls and emergency department attendances gradually increased with increasing temperature, peaking around 18°C and then leveling off or decreasing as temperatures increased, whereas household OOH contacts had little relationship to temperature. Comparing the lowest and highest estimated risks, mental health-related contacts vary by approximately 17% to 20%, indicating that the impact is modest but measurable across the population.
Looking more closely at the different groups, the overall temperature pattern of NHS 111 contacts remained broadly similar across ages. However, for adults 64 years and older, ED visit rates showed a clear U-shaped pattern, with increased health care utilization in both cold and warm climates. The effect of temperature also varies depending on conditions. Warmer weather has led to an increase in calls to NHS 111 due to sleep disorders, as well as an increase in calls to NHS 111 and emergency hospital visits related to alcohol consumption and overdose. In contrast, the researchers found little evidence that temperature affected self-harm or depression-related contacts, while showing that cold weather reduced anxiety-related GP OOH and ED visits.
Unlike temperature, rainfall did not show a consistent relationship with mental health-related health care utilization, regardless of age, gender, or condition. However, sunlight emerged as the most consistent weather factor across all three health services. Days with the least amount of sunlight were associated with increased mental health-related contacts, especially on days with the lowest daylight levels. Although sunlight did not show a clear association with symptoms in most individuals, decreased sunlight was associated with increased GP OOH and ED visits for anxiety and depression.
These patterns were largely consistent across demographic groups. The greatest increase in ED use with decreased sunlight occurred among adults aged 45 to 64 years, but analyzes by gender showed few significant differences. The results remained stable when the researchers excluded the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that the pandemic did not have a significant impact on the overall results.
The researchers also assessed whether the findings differed by region of England. Sunshine showed the most consistent association nationally, whereas temperature varied moderately between regions, and precipitation showed the greatest regional variation, particularly in emergency department data.
Regular weather could help predict mental health demands
Current research shows that mental health-related healthcare utilization is sensitive to weather patterns, with increases observed during periods of high temperatures and low sunlight. In contrast, no consistent effects were found for rainfall.
Importantly, the authors emphasize that this study measured: Medical care-seeking behavior rather than a confirmed psychiatric diagnosis. As a result, the findings do not show that weather changes the underlying incidence or prevalence of mental illness. Instead, they suggest that daily weather conditions can influence when people seek mental health support, providing insights that could help health services predict fluctuations in demand.
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