Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many people under 25 years old have been prescribed by the NHS selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in each year since 2015, broken down by age and sex.

The NHS Business Services Authority publishes statistics on prescriptions for mental health, but the published data does not specifically include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors by age band.

The attached table shows the number of patients aged under 25 years old with one or more National Health Service prescriptions for a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor that were prescribed in England and then dispensed in the community in England, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, or the Channel Islands.

The sum of the age groups for each year does not equal the total for all under 25 years olds due to patients with prescriptions spanning two age groups.

Patient counts have been rounded to the nearest 10. A dash ‘-‘ indicates a patient count of between zero and four. Totals may not sum due to rounding and patients with unknown gender.