David Simpson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Simpson on 2016-02-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential benefits of talking therapy for the treatment of mental health.

Alistair Burt

The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme is a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommend evidence based intervention, helping adults with common mental health conditions (including anxiety and depression) to recover. The latest data shows that that nationally we are achieving a 45% recovery rate and 61% rate in reliable improvement. In total over 733,000 people have recovered from their condition since the start of the IAPT programme, and between October 2008 and February 2015 over 100,000 people moved off of sick pay and benefits.

The Impact Assessment published in 2011 shows that the IAPT programme would expect to deliver improved health and wellbeing of those treated, as well as savings to the National Health Service and wider economic benefits such as reductions in sickness absence.