Request

‘Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request the following information:

Quarterly number of patients receiving antidepressants over the past year of available data (Q4 2023/24 Q4 and Q1-3 2024/5) who had not been prescribed such drugs in the quarter five years prior (Q4 2018/19, and Q1-3 2019/20).

These figures should be broken down by gender and by age bands (5 year categories eg. 0 to 4, 5 to 9 etc.).

I would like you to provide the information in a spreadsheet format.’

Response

I can confirm that we hold the information you have requested, and a copy of the information is attached.

NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for pharmacy contractors, appliance contractors, dispensing doctors and personal administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to dispensing doctors and personal administration). This involves processing over one billion prescription items and payments totaling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care users.

Data Source

The data source was the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse.

Time Period

Presented by both financial year and quarter, the time period is for:

January 2019 - December 2019

January 2024 - December 2024

Organisation Data

The data provided is for prescriptions prescribed in England.

Patients

The dataset covers patients who received a prescription for antidepressants in Q4 2023/24, or Q1, Q2, Q3 2024/25, and did not receive a prescription for antidepressants in the corresponding quarter five years prior (Q4 2018/19, or Q1, Q2, Q3 2019/20). The maximum age for a patient in a given quarter has been used to reduce the number of patients being counted in multiple age bands within a quarter.

Identified Patients

Prescriptions are only included if both the NHS Number and patient age were captured during NHSBSA processing. 98.73% of prescriptions for antidepressants have both the NHS Number and date of birth. The age recorded on a prescription is not validated during processing. Therefore, errors made during the prescription submission may be reflected in the dataset.

Drugs

Limited to British National Formulary (BNF) Section 0403 - Antidepressants.

Exclusions

The data excludes: items not dispensed, disallowed and those returned to the contractor for further clarification.

prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in prisons, hospitals and private prescriptions.

items prescribed but not presented for dispensing or not submitted to NHS Prescription Services by the dispenser.

items supplied as part of a Pharmacy First consultation or service

Data Queries

Please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement:

“Dental Services, NHSBSA Copyright 2025” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.