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One in four women in Northern Ireland were prescribed an anti-depressant in 2025-26 – and two-thirds of the population received antibiotics, an annual government report reveals.

The Department of Health’s latest report on pharmacy services in Northern Ireland reveals that 16 per cent of the male population were prescribed an antidepressant drug in 2025-26 and that people in the most deprived areas received prescriptions for these medicines one and a half times more frequently than those in the least deprived. 

At the end of the financial year, there were 506 community pharmacies in Northern Ireland – two fewer than the year before.

The number of items dispensed by Northern Ireland’s pharmacies rose by two per cent to an average of 91,000 per pharmacy. The total number of items dispensed by the sector rose to 46.4 million, the highest ever amount and a 14 per cent increase on 2015-16.

This equated to a monthly average of 2.3 million prescription forms being processed, three per cent more than the previous year’s monthly average.

The total ingredient cost also rose by three per cent, reaching £510m for the financial year. The DH said that after successive drops between 2015-16 and 2018-19, spend has consistently risen since and is now 16 per cent higher than 10 years ago.

The sector received £135m in ‘other payments’ – meaning professional fees and clinical service payments – a seven per cent hike on the previous year. 

Seventy-three per cent of the population live less than a mile from their nearest community pharmacy. However, there is significant variation between rural and urban areas, with Belfast residents living on average 0.3 miles from a pharmacy and those in Fermanagh living at a distance of 1.6 miles.