Virtual cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) accounts for over 30% of NHS mental health treatments — up from 10% in 2017

Con­cern as a third of NHS men­tal health treat­ments shift online (The Guardian):

An Observ­er analy­sis of data from pri­vate providers, cross-checked against NHS fig­ures, reveals around one in three men­tal health treat­ments in Eng­land are deliv­ered online, up from one in five in 2019, and one in 10 in 2017. Patients with mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion or anx­i­ety can be referred to app- or web-based, self-guid­ed cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py (CBT) cours­es, instead of tra­di­tion­al face-to-face talk­ing therapies.

The health watch­dog Nice has approved three online CBT cours­es for NHS patients with depres­sion: Beat­ing the Blues, by 365 Health Solu­tions; Deprex­is, by Ethy­pharm Dig­i­tal Ther­a­py; and Space from Depres­sion by Sil­ver­Cloud. It has also approved anoth­er six online cours­es for anx­i­ety, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and body dys­mor­phic dis­or­der … In the past decade near­ly 700,000 NHS patients have been referred to third-par­ty vir­tu­al ther­a­py ser­vices run by Sil­ver­Cloud – the lead­ing pri­vate sup­pli­er of depres­sion and anx­i­ety online CBT cours­es to the NHS – which is owned by US-based telemed­i­cine firm Amwell…

“Dig­i­tal tools offer the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help ser­vices bet­ter cope, as well as pre­vent­ing them from becom­ing so over­whelmed in the first place,” said Dr Derek Richards, head of research at Amwell. “Ear­ly inter­ven­tion is crit­i­cal in pre­vent­ing a patient’s mild to mod­er­ate symp­toms from wors­en­ing – which has a twofold ben­e­fit: eco­nom­i­cal­ly for the NHS, but more impor­tant­ly, it reduces the per­son­al cost to patients.” But he added online ther­a­py may not suit every­one and that it was still up to health­care pro­fes­sion­als to iden­ti­fy “who may and may not benefit”.

News in Context:

• The Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) in Eng­land to roll-out nine online cog­ni­tive-behav­iour­al ther­a­pies (CBT) for adults with anx­i­ety or depression
• Rec­om­men­da­tions by NICE: Health tech­nol­o­gy eval­u­a­tion | Ref­er­ence number:HTE9 | Pub­lished: 16 May 2023
• NICE in the UK issues rec­om­men­da­tion for Sleepio app, the dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py for insom­nia by Big Health
• A call to action: We need the right incen­tives to guide eth­i­cal inno­va­tion in neu­rotech and healthcare