Two in five people with depression or an anxiety disorder who complete NHS psychological therapy recover from their condition, says a report from the NHS Information Centre today.

However, the findings also show that patterns of access to NHS psychological therapies and also the recovery rate following completion of treatment vary from place to place for the six million people in England who suffer from such conditions.

Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Key Performance Indicators April 2011 to June 2011 is the first report to examine the impact of the NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme which is being rolled out across England between 2008 and 2015.

The programme is designed to support the NHS to implement National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines on treating people suffering from depression and anxiety disorders. It also aims to reduce the number of people unable to work because of the conditions.

In the first quarterly results, the report showed:

• 42 per cent of those who completed treatment under the programme during the period were no longer ‘at caseness' – i.e. no longer showing measurable symptoms of depression or anxiety disorder at their last therapy session.
• Recovery rates for those who completed treatment varied between Primary Care Trusts (PCTs); ranging from seven per cent in one PCT to 63 per cent in another. This may be associated with the roll out of the programme, as some sites started delivering services more recently than others.
• About two per cent of people estimated to have depression or an anxiety disorder in England entered treatment under the programme during the quarter. This proportion varied by PCT, from 0.2 per cent to five per cent, which again may be associated with the roll out of the programme.

The report also showed that, during the period covered:

• 210,540 people were referred for psychological therapies
• 123,975 entered treatment⁵
• During the reporting quarter, 5,001 people who had completed treatment moved off sick pay and benefits.

Chief executive of the NHS Information Centre Tim Straughan said: “This is the first report to look at the effectiveness of the IAPT programme and will be of interest not only to the Department of Health and mental health providers but also to patients too.

“These figures may reflect the pace of roll out of the programme and we will continue to publish reports to show the impact of the programme as it beds in further.”

The report is at www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/psychologicaltherapies1112

ENDS

Notes to editors

1. The NHS Information Centre for health and social care (The NHS IC) is England's authoritative, central, independent source of health and social care information. It works with a wide range of health and social care providers nationwide to provide the facts and figures that help the NHS and social services run effectively. Its role is to collect data, analyse it and convert it into useful information which helps providers improve their services and supports academics, researcher, regulators and policymakers in their work. The NHS IC also produces a wide range of statistical publications each year across a number of areas including: primary care, health and lifestyles, screening, hospital care, population and geography, social care and workforce and pay statistics.
2. Data for the report is returned by commissioners of services not the IAPT providers. The providers will not return data directly until the new IAPT Information Standards Board approved dataset starts to flow in April.2012.
3. The roll out of IAPT services happened in three waves with first wave sites being rolled out in 2008/09, second wave in 2009/10 and the third in 2010/11 with some leeway as to when they would exactly come on line. The pace of rollout may explain some regional variation. For further information on the IAPT programme, visit www.iapt.nhs.uk
4. In the report, the number of people who suffer from depression and/or an anxiety disorder is put at six million. This is from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey which took place in 2000. (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/search/index.html?newquery=adult+psychiatric+morbidity+survey+2000)
5. The number of people who completed treatment in the quarter is not a direct subset of the number of people referred in the same quarter, as some may have been referred for treatment in a previous quarter.
6. The total number of people moving off sick pay or benefits following completion of treatment is not directly relative to the total number entering treatment. This is because a person may not have been claiming sick pay or benefits when they started their treatment.
7. ‘Recovery rates' are based on those who completed therapy during the period, which is considerably less than the number of people who entered therapy during the period. They show people not ‘at caseness' in last session as a percentage of people ‘at caseness' in first session (i.e. it excludes people who entered therapy but were not at caseness in first session).
8. A patient is deemed to be ‘at caseness' when suffering from depression and/or anxiety disorders, as determined by scores on the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ9) for depression and/or the Generalised anxiety Disorder scale (GAD7) for anxiety disorders, or other anxiety disorder specific measure as appropriate for the patient's diagnosis.
9. Numbers relate to instances of access to services, not necessarily to people, i.e., one person might have accessed services more than once.
10. PCT is PCT of commissioner.
11. For media enquires about this report please call 0845 257 6990 or contact mediaenquiries@ic.nhs.uk