Mental health therapists pressured into exaggerating success

An expert in mental health at work has claimed that NHS mental health therapists are pressurised to exaggerate their success in treating patients.

In what she describes as ‘Uberisation’, Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Elizabeth Cotton told the British Sociological Association conference on work that 41 per cent of therapists working for the NHS’s talking treatments programme had been asked to manipulate data about patients’ progress.

The NHS describes its Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme, which was launched in 2008, as ‘the most ambitious programme of talking therapies in the world’. It is designed to make therapy more accessible, and provides psychotherapy to more than a million people each year, according to the health service.

IAPT plans should allow the number of people with anxiety disorders or depression who can access talking therapies increase by an extra 380,000 per year to reach 1.9 million by 2023-24, under NHS plans.

But Dr Cotton says that the pressure on therapists was such that some had been encouraged by their managers to coach patients to give positive answers to questionnaires.

She said that patients were urged to repeat the questionnaires until a positive response was obtained, and, in some cases, where patients discharged themselves without notifying the NHS, the therapist was encouraged to fill in data sheets on their behalf to reflect a positive outcome.

Claire Murdoch, NHS national mental health director, said: “The NHS talking therapies programme is a world-leading service that supports more than one million people a year struggling with anxiety and depression, and patients’ views on the service are recorded outside of their treatment sessions, when the therapist is not present.

“During the pandemic, NHS staff have been working round the clock to provide patients with specialist mental health support, and I would like to thank them for their efforts. If any therapist has concerns about data collection, they should formally report them to their professional body.”