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Published 24 July 2025.
Summary
The 10 Year Health Plan for England: fit for the future outlines mental health as an early priority
This publication aims to describe the prescribing of medicines used to improve mental health in England that are subsequently dispensed in the community. This publication does not include data on medicines used in secondary care, prisons, or issued by a private prescriber.
The Medicines Used in Mental Health publication is an official statistics release.
Key findings
In England in 2024/25:
- 92.6 million antidepressant items were prescribed to an estimated 8.89 million identified patients
- items and identified patients both increased in 4 out of the 5 drug groups
- 4 out of the 5 drug groups had higher prescribing in the most deprived areas
- antidepressant drugs were the BNF section with the largest number of items prescribed with an increase of 3.94% since 2023/24
- antidepressant drugs also had the largest number of identified patients, an increase of 1.61% compared to 2023/24
- the number of adults prescribed CNS stimulants and drugs for ADHD rose by 24.3% since 2023/24 to 190,000 identified patients
- the number of children prescribed CNS stimulants and drugs for ADHD rose by 9.48% since 2023/24 to 135,000 identified patients
- items prescribed in the drugs for dementia section increased by 6.96% since 2023/24 to 4.79 million
- identified patients prescribed drugs for dementia increased by 5.36% since 2023/24 to 326,000
- drugs for dementia remained the only BNF section where prescribing was higher in the least deprived areas
Resource list
Medicines used in Mental Health - Summary narrative 2015/16 to 2024/25 (HTML)Background information and methodology note (HTML)
Medicines used in Mental Health - Quarterly - Prescribing during the COVID-19 pandemic October to December 2024 (HTML)Pre-release access list (HTML)
This publication has been produced using a reproducible analytical pipeline (RAP) as part of our commitment to transparency and open code. You can view the code used in this RAP on our Medicines Used in Mental Health GitHub repository.
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Responsible statistician: Graham Platten