Ten years on from the inception of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Service (IAPT), it is important to review what would have happened but for IAPT. Using this comparison (what economists term the appropriate counterfactual), it is far from clear that IAPT has conferred any advantage and it is extremely doubtfuI whether the £1.3 billion spent on it has been worthwhile. Perhaps in the New Year IAPT should be renamed Impoverished Access to Psychological Therapies!
More about this anon.
Happy New Year
Dr Mike Scott
One reply on “What If IAPT Had Never Happened?”
May be I’m just old , but I seem to recall how for many years the primary community mental health nurse seemed to suffice for most mental health needs in primary care… Although it didn’t come with all the glitz and supposed success reflected by out come measures etc ; it was arguably no less effective than the hi or low intensity CBT offered by IAPT. Certainly a lot cheaper to deliver !!!