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Published 23 July 2026.
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.
Publication
Medicines Used in Mental Health - summary narrative 2016/17 to 2025/26 (HTML)
Key findings
In England in 2025/26:
- 96 million antidepressant items were prescribed to an estimated 9.1 million identified patients
- both items and identified patients increased in all 5 drug groups
- 4 out of the 5 drug groups had higher numbers of identified patients in the most deprived areas
- antidepressant drugs were the BNF section with the largest number of items prescribed with an increase of 3.1% since 2024/25
- antidepressant drugs also had the largest number of identified patients, an increase of 2.2% compared to 2024/25
- the number of adults prescribed CNS stimulants and drugs for ADHD rose by 40% since 2024/25 to an estimated 267,000 identified patients
- the number of children prescribed CNS stimulants and drugs for ADHD rose by 17% since 2024/25 to an estimated 158,000 identified patients
- items prescribed in the drugs for dementia section increased by 5.2% since 2024/25 to 5 million items
- identified patients prescribed drugs for dementia increased by 5.36% since 2024/25 to an estimated 341,000 identified patients
- drugs for dementia remained the only BNF section where the number of identified patients was higher in the least deprived areas
Changes to these statistics
For this release, we’ve changed the methodology around the data included in our IMD breakdown tables. The IMD tables are now restricted to only include items and Net Ingredient Cost (NIC) which can be associated with an identified patient id.
We have also changed our methodology for Integrated Care Board (ICB) charts in the summary narratives. Previous releases aggregated identified patient totals from the ICB and chemical substance combined breakdown in the supporting tables. This double counted patients who received items from multiple chemical substances in the same year and ICB. These charts now use data extracted at ICB level only, to only count a patient once across all chemical substances.
When methodology changes between releases, historical data from previous narrative reports and tables can also change. You should always use the latest release of our publications.
More details on all changes to these statistics can be found in the background and methodology document for this release.
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