Marsden J, White M, Annand F, et al. - Given the risk of dependence or withdrawal in correlation with antidepressants, opioids for non-cancer pain, gabapentinoids (gabapentin and pregabalin), benzodiazepines, and Z-drugs (zopiclone, zaleplon, and zolpidem), researchers sought to gain evidence for these harms and to determine the prevalence of dispensed prescriptions, their geographical distribution, and duration of continuous receipt using all patient-linked prescription data in England. In this mixed-methods public health review, they performed a rapid evidence evaluation of articles (Jan 1, 2008, to Oct 3, 2018; with explorations of MEDLINE, Embase, and PsycINFO, and the Cochrane and King's Fund libraries), an open call-for-evidence on patient experience and service evaluations, and a retrospective, patient-linked analysis of the National Health Service (NHS) Business Services Authority prescription database (April 1, 2015, to March 30, 2018) for all adults aged 18 years and over. They identified 77 articles on the five medicine classes from the literature search and call-for-evidence. A prescription dispensed for antidepressants, opioids (for non-cancer pain), gabapentinoids, benzodiazepines, or Z-drugs was made for over a quarter of the adult population in England in 1 year. Despite being either not recommended by clinical guidelines or of doubtful efficacy in many cases, long-term (> 12 months) prescribing was commonly observed. For three of these medicine classes, they observed that more people had a prescription dispensed in areas of higher deprivation; adjusted incident rate ratios (referenced to quintile 1) ranged from 1·10 to 1·24 for antidepressants, 1·20 to 1·85 for opioids, and 1·21 to 1·85 for gabapentinoids across quintiles; concentration of higher indirectly (gender and age) standardized rates (ISRs) was generally in the north and east of England. For benzodiazepines and Z-drugs, the highest ISRs were generally observed in the southwest, southeast, and east of England; low ISRs were reported in the north. Increased deprivation was noted in correlation with Z-drugs, but only at the highest quintile.