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Published 5 March 2026.
Publication
Medicines used in Mental Health - Quarterly summary narrative October to December 2025 (HTML)
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
Between October and December 2025:
- 24 million antidepressant items were prescribed to an estimated 7.2 million identified patients
- the cost of antidepressant items increased by just over 7%, from £54 million to £58 million
- the number of items and identified patients increased compared to the previous quarter for all 5 drug groups in this publication
Compared to the previous quarter:
- there was nearly a 2% increase in antidepressant items and a 1% increase in identified patients
- the number of hypnotics and anxiolytics items increased by 2% to 3.5 million, and the number of identified patients increased by 1.6% to 1.1 million
- the number of items prescribed of drugs used in psychoses and related disorders increased by 1.5% to 3.6 million, while identified patients saw an increase of just over 1% to 671,000
- for CNS stimulants and drugs for ADHD, the number of items increased by close to 9% to 1.1 million and identified patients increased by nearly 9% to 323,000
- drugs for dementia items increased by just over 2% to 1.3 million, and the number of identified patients increased by nearly 2% to 287,000
Prescribing costs increased for 3 out of the 5 drug groups when compared to the previous quarter.
Of the 5 drug groups:
- antidepressant costs saw the largest percentage increase of just over 7%, a larger percentage increase than for both items and patients in this drug group
- CNS stimulants and drugs for ADHD costs increased by nearly 6%
- costs of prescribed hypnotics and anxiolytics increased by just over 1%
- drugs for dementia costs fell by nearly 9%, the largest percentage decrease of the 5 groups, despite small increases for items and patients
- antipsychotics costs decreased by just over 1%
Resource list
Background information and methodology note (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: Kate Abel