Services

To find your nearest IAPT service please visit the therapy pages of NHS Choices.

Treatments
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends a range of psychological therapies to treat people with depression and anxiety disorders and bring them to recovery. It also recommends these therapies are used to provide a system of stepped care, shown in the diagram below. Stepped care has two principles:

Treatment should always have the best chance of delivering positive outcomes while burdening the patient as little as possible.
A system of scheduled review to detect and act on non-improvement must be in place to enable stepping up to more intensive treatments, stepping down where a less intensive treatment becomes appropriate and stepping out when an alternative treatment or no treatment become appropriate.

Staffing
Two types of psychological therapy practitioners are required:

High Intensity therapists trained in cognitive behavioural therapy for people with moderate and severe depression and anxiety disorders
Psychological wellbeing practitioners trained in cognitive behavioral approaches for people with mild to moderate anxiety and depression. These approaches include guided self help and delivering psycho-educational groups. Services will also have administrative staff, employment advisors, a GP advisor and links with other services such as housing, drugs advice and benefits

Choice
It is important that people have a say in what kind of treatment they receive. This helps ensure the best health outcome for them. Clinicians should explain which treatment they are recommending and why they think it is suitable for the patient.

Access
Some people will refer themselves to the service but most will be referred for therapy by their GP or a member of the practice team. The team and their patients should have clear information about local services and the treatment choices available.

Outcomes
IAPT services routinely measure people's health outcome. This charts their progress and has therapeutic benefit. It is part of ongoing, collaborative service evaluation too, providing feedback on elements of treatment that are helpful or unhelpful.