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Unregulated Mental Health Service Has Run Away With £4 billion

Following a Freedom of Information request NHS Improvement confirmed to me yesterday that the the total cost of the Governments Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) Service in 2017/18 was £394 million.  I had asked them for the annual cost of IAPT since its’ inception, but they said that they were unable to furnish such figures! The service is twelve years old, thus conservatively it has likely cost the taxpayer £4 billion. 

For Rail and Road we have a regulatory body the  Office of Rail and Road, that monitors the performance of Network Rail and the varying train operators, but for mental health there is no such independent regulatory body. IAPT polices itself, and makes unexamined claims of recovery rates to secure funding from Clinical Commissioning Groups, who have never performed an independent audit. In my own area, Talk Liverpool last October publicly claimed an 87% recovery rate  for those who completed treatment, unsurprisingly therefore the Liverpool CCG has increased its funding by 25% to 10 million in the coming financial year. My own research published in 2018 suggests an actual 10% recovery rate.

It is time that the Government and Dominic Cummings got to grips with this.

The dropbox link to the FOI  response is below:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x5kza6e6bpft2b3/Scott%20Internal%20Review%20Decision%20Letter%2020.01.2020.pdf?dl=0

My own findings are in the dropbox link below;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/flvxtq2jyhmn6i1/IAPT%20The%20Need%20for%20Radical%20Reform.pdf?dl=0

more about these matters anon

Dr Mike Scott