Opportunity cost of antidepressant prescribing in England: analysis of routine data

doi:10.1136/bmj.38377.715799.F7

BMJ 2005;330:999-1000 (30 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.38377.715799.F7 (published 18 March 2005)

Paper

Opportunity cost of antidepressant prescribing in England: analysis of routine data

Sandra Hollinghurst, lecturer in health economics¹, David Kessler, general practitioner research fellow¹, Tim J Peters, professor of primary care health services research¹, David Gunnell, professor of epidemiology²

¹ Academic Unit of Primary Health Care, Department of Community Based Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS6 6JL, ² Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 2PR

Correspondence to: S P Hollinghurst s.p.hollinghurst@bristol.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

Recently, prescribing of antidepressant drugs has increasedexceptionally.¹ At the same time, concerns have been raisedabout the medicalisation of human distress and, more recently,about the safety of antidepressants.¹

Many general practitioners would like to refer patients forpsychological treatment, for which there is good evidence ofeffectiveness,² but are constrained by the lack of NHS therapists.We estimated the opportunity cost of the recent rise in antidepressantprescribing by valuing it in terms of an effective alternativetreatment—cognitive behaviour therapy.

Methods and results

We used Department of Health data on the number and cost ofantidepressant drugs dispensed in the community in England toquantify the changes between 1991 and 2002. The baseline year(1991) was chosen to ensure a meaningful timescale and to covera period of consistent approaches to recording. We took populationstatistics from www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase, and appliedan inflation rate of 32% (from www.statistics.gov.uk/rpi) to1991 . . . [Full text of this article]

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