Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to reduce prescriptions for anti-depressant medication.

Overprescribing can be addressed by taking a shared decision-making approach and optimising a person's medicines, and by ensuring that patients are prescribed the right medicines at the right time, in the right doses.

NHS England has published Optimising personalised care for adults prescribed medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: framework for action. It aims to further reduce inappropriate prescribing of medicines which can cause withdrawal, such as anti-depressants, where they may no longer be the most clinically appropriate treatment for patients and alternatives to medicines may be equally or more appropriate. More information on the framework is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/optimising-personalised-care-for-adults-prescribed-medicines-associated-with-dependence-or-withdrawal-symptoms/

NHS England provides support to integrated care boards (ICBs) and primary care as the Framework is implemented. For example, there is National medicines optimisation opportunities for the NHS, which includes an opportunity for addressing inappropriate antidepressant prescribing, with more information available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/national-medicines-optimisation-opportunities-2023-24/

There is also Specialist Pharmacy Service advice on deprescribing antidepressants, for which more information is available at the following link:

https://www.sps.nhs.uk/articles/deprescribing-of-antidepressants-for-depression-and-anxiety/

There is annual investment of £2.3 billion until 2024 in mental health services and NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression (which delivered 670,000 courses of treatment in 2022/23). More information is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-talking-therapies-for-anxiety-and-depression-annual-reports/2022-23

There is also a national programme to ensure social prescribing is an option for patients, as well as funding for social prescribers through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS). More information is available at the following links:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/social-prescribing/

https://www.england.nhs.uk/gp/expanding-our-workforce/

There is also support for delivering Structured Medication Reviews, including those on medicines associated with dependence and withdrawal symptoms), via: Health Innovation Network training to help build GP and prescribing health care professionals' confidence in, and understanding of, the complex issues surrounding stopping inappropriate medicines safely. Guidance is also published by NHS England on Structured Medication Review and Medicines Optimisation, which is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/structured-medication-reviews-and-medicines-optimisation/

Offering treatments that are not medicines is also key to addressing overprescribing. Many other initiatives delivered across the National Health Service contribute towards this.