Description of impact
There are three proposed potential routes for impact:1. De-medicalisation and reduced antidepressant prescribing. We are currently aiming to reduce antidepressant prescribing in the UK, based on evidence-based claims that current prescribing trends are not reducing rates of depression and anxiety and are fuelling unnecessary adverse effect and incurring unnecessary costs. I was invited to a special session with the Science and Tech Select Committee to persuade the committee to undertake an SC inquiry into over-medicalisation (the committees Head of Policy and Clerk, had read my book, Sedated). The inquiry is likely to happen, but the formal agreement won’t be issued until the new year. We are also calling for reduce prescribing via launch of your APPG for Beyond Pills on December 5th 2023, with supportive pieces written for the BMJ (published Dec 5th 2023). If we manage to reduce prescribing rates we will have had significant public health impact.
2. We are undertaking research into de-prescribing initiatives, which will inform our national deprescribing programme (what works in services in favour of advancing de-prescribing in safe and efficacious ways). Roehampton has provided seed funding for such work, and for providing support for a wider £1,000,000 bid with the ESRC, to study pilot deprescribing programmes in view of informing national policy.
3. In 2019 I co-led & co-edited, along with Dr Anne Guy & Dr Rosie Rizq, the creation of national guidance on prescribed drug dependency and withdrawal for all UK psychological therapists (approx. 75,000 psychological therapists). The creation of the guidance was sponsored, funded and endorsed by the British Psychological Society (BPS), the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), the National Association of Counsellors (NAC) and the British Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling (BACP). While I edited, planned and wrote significant sections of the guidance (including the introduction), its writing involved over 20 further co-collaborators (academics, clinicians and service users). The guidance was published free-to-access in 2019 in four different formats. It is currently being translated into four languages and is now the primary text for all UK psychological therapists in training and in practice, covering matters relating to how psychological therapists can best practice with clients/patients either taking or withdrawing from psychiatric medication. In Jan 2022, the guidance was formally included in our national accrediting bodies’ ScopEd exercise, which is a joint initiative by the UKCP, BACP and BPS.
ScopeEd specifies what competencies and skills all British psychological therapists must acquire to attained professional accreditation and to maintain ethical professional practice. ScopeEd now asserts that all UK psychological therapists must develop and display competency in working with clients/patients either taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs, while recommending that the guidance be used nationally to facilitate the development of such skills and competencies. As the ScopeEd exercise involves all major accrediting bodies, and as the exercise will ensure its national distribution across all psychological therapy trainings, the guidance will highly impact the training and practice of psychological therapists for many years to come. The guidance has already been downloaded over 40,000 times and can be viewed here: https://prescribeddrug.info/ We are now developing learning resources for therapists to be disturbed across psychological therapy programmes throughout the UK.
| Impact date | 2023 → 2027 |
|---|---|
| Category of impact | Impact on public health |