NHS urged to offer online psychotherapy

The NHS should introduce online psychological counselling services for people suffering from depression, a leading medical expert has said.

A Lancet study of online cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) showed it more than doubled the chances of recovery.

Dr Tim Kendall, who was heavily involved in establishing national guidelines on dealing with depression, has said online counselling should be introduced in order to make CBT more readily available to patients.

One in six people experience depression at some point in their lives.

Observers have been highly critical of a growing reliance upon anti-depressants as a means to treat depression. Prescriptions for the drugs increasing almost two-fold in a decade, from 18,424,473 in 1998 to 35,960,500 last year.

Experts believe that CBT is more beneficial to patients than drugs in mild to moderate cases of depression.

And even in people with severe depression, therapy such as CBT, which focuses on helping people to solve problems and overcome negative, unhelpful or false thought patterns, can help when combined with medication, according to Nice.

Dr Kendall, chair of the NICE guidelines on depression and anxiety and a psychiatrist in Sheffield, said NHS capacity for psychological therapy was improving fast but care was still patchy.

He added that online therapy would not be suitable for everyone and the NHS needed to offer a choice.

The criticism comes following a government pledge of £170 million investment in “talking therapies” back in 2007, after it was estimated that the NHS in England needed 10,000 extra therapists.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said trusts should provide funding for CBT services according to local need.

She said the psychological therapies programme had now rolled out to 35 primary care trusts and more than 800 CBT therapists are now in training.

“By 2011, a total of 3,600 such therapists will have been trained and people will find it much easier to get this kind of therapy than they do now.”