Background
The NHS Talking Therapies programme (re-branded from Improving Access to Psychological Therapies in January 2023) was designed to support the NHS in delivering evidence-based talking therapies for people with common mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety disorders, in England. We explore how access and outcomes for the programme have changed over time.
Access to NHS Talking Therapies
There have been successive access targets to increase the proportion of people with depression and anxiety who receive treatment. The 2019 NHS Long Term Plan target for 1.9 million adults to access IAPT services by 2023/24 was missed by 0.6 million referrals. 2026/27 targets set out in the Medium Term Planning Framework focus on delivering 805,000 courses of NHS Talking Therapies by the end of 2026/27 with 51% reliable recovery rate and 69% reliable improvement rate.
The number of referrals to IAPT and the number of referrals starting treatment have concurrently increased over time. In 2012/13 there were 883,968 referrals to IAPT, which increased to 1.8 million in 2021/22—the highest yet on record. In 2022/23, this fell to 1.7 million. Given that people can self-refer into every NHS Talking Therapies service, the slight drop in the number of referrals might be due to the recent re-branding of the programme.
The number of referrals starting treatment also doubled from 2012/13 to 2019/20, surpassing one million by 2017/18.
Finishing a course of treatment is defined as having two or more attended treatment care contacts between the date when the referral was received and the date when it ended. The number of referrals completing a course of treatment grew from 144,210 in 2012/13 to 670,419 in 2024/25. Following additional funding towards the digitisation and expansion of the programme in late 2023, the new target for referrals finishing a course of treatment has increased to 700,00 (end date unspecified). Worryingly, however, since 2016/17, the growth in the number of completed referrals plateaued, unlike the trend in referrals received and those starting treatment. A closer investigation into attrition in the NHS Talking Therapies service suggests that “aligning what patients need and prefer to what the service offers is one of the solutions to curb attrition”.
Recovery after treatment completion by deprivation
The NHS has set a target reliable recovery rate of 51% for 2026/27 and 53% for 2028/29. Although the average recovery rate in 2023/24 was 47%, this obscures the difference in recovery rates between individuals of different deprivation levels. In 2024/25, 52.4% of those who completed a course of treatment from the least deprived decile recovered, compared to 40.5% from the most deprived decile. Even though a larger number of patients from the most deprived deciles complete treatment provided by the NHS Talking Therapies programme, they are less likely to recover than their least deprived counterparts.
Deprivation and mental health are inextricably linked. Poor housing conditions, unemployment and income insecurity are all factors for poor mental health. Often, mental healthcare alone cannot improve mental health when it is unaccompanied by changes in wider factors that can give rise to and exacerbate mental health conditions.
About this data
NHS Talking Therapies (previously known as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, or IAPT) is an NHS-funded programme in England that offers interventions approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for treating people with common mental health problems, such as OCD, depression and anxiety.
When patients begin treatment through the NHS Talking Therapies programme, they are clinically assessed on their experience of anxiety and depression. Those who score above a certain threshold are considered a clinical case. When reassessed at the end of treatment, people who no longer score above the clinical threshold for anxiety and depression (so are no longer a clinical case), are considered recovered. The recovery rate is the proportion of people who start treatment with a high score, and complete treatment having reduced their score to below the clinical threshold. The government target is that 50% of eligible referrals to NHS Talking Therapies services should move to recovery.
From 2022/23, the Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT) annual report series has been superseded by the "NHS Talking Therapies Annual Statistics" series.
For more information about the data, please see the NHS Digital website.