Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will estimate the average cost to the public purse of treating repeated episodes of depression by (a) drugs, (b) individual counselling and (c) mindfulness-based therapy in the most recent period for which figures are available.

It is not possible to make such an estimate as reference costs are based on the cost of the average care pathway and are not broken down further by therapy type.

National Health Service providers submit reference costs annually. Reference costs detail the average unit cost to the NHS of providing defined services to NHS patients in England in a given financial year.