Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the proportion of veterans who have served in the armed forces that were in receipt of mental health services in 2018.

The attached table shows counts of referrals received, entering treatment and finishing a course of treatment of patients who recorded as being an ex-British Armed Forces member for Quarter 4 2017/18, Quarter 1 2018/19 and Quarter 2 2018/9, England level from the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) dataset.

The number of Ex-British Armed Forces veterans in contact with mental health services and the number of Ex-British Armed Forces veterans in hospital at the end of November 2018 from the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) is also attached.

The IAPT dataset has collected information on veterans accessing this service since 2012. IAPT is run by the National Health Service in England and offers National Institute for Health and Care Excellence-approved therapies for treating people with anxiety and depression.

The IAPT dataset records whether a referral is for a patient who has been a member of the British Armed Forces. It is not possible to identify the type of Armed Forces Service that the patient belonged to, or whether the patient was a regular or reserve veteran.