The new England-wide NHS prescription data* covering the month of September 2022 came out recently, presenting three full quarters of data. So it is time, once again, to scrutinise the data and see if, maybe, just once – fingers crossed – prescriptions will show a declining trend.
Based on previous prescribing trends, it would be wise to say don’t hold your breath.
Looking at the four categories of particular interest, the following breakdown surfaces, which compares the changes (for the first three quarters) with previous years:
Antidepressants show a steady rise year-on-year of between 3-7% for the past 14 years. So this year’s rise is concerning, certainly, but nothing out of the ordinary.
What is out of the ordinary is the prescription levels for ADHD drugs. There has been a nearly 16% increase in the first three quarters of 2022 compared to the same period last year. This is massive. Looking at a much longer data set, the question arises: will there be such a large year-on-year rise in prescriptions for ADHD drugs in previous years?
No, there hasn’t been such a steep rise.
The highest increase was in 2021 at a whopping 8.6%. But that is nowhere near the 15.5% that is evident so far in 2022. The corresponding increase in cost to the taxpayer (Net Ingredient Cost) is nearly 14% compared to 2021 for the same period.
Are we witnessing an “epidemic” of ADHD cases in the UK (whatever that actually means)? Such an “epidemic” could be expected to be all over the news, but try Googling for instance “ADHD on the rise UK NHS”. In September, when the information was being gathered and analysed (and the increase in ADHD prescriptions was already above 15% for the first two quarters of 2022 compared to 2021), there was only one story in a publication few people have have heard of (as it seems to be a professional publication for GPs). Pulse Today reported an 18.7% increase in ADHD prescriptions, but it compared only Q2 of 2021 and 2022, respectively.
The article predictably did nothing to explain what was happening. It stated:
The upward trend in the prescribing of ADHD drugs since 2017/18 corresponds with an increase in the number of identified patients in the category, which jumped almost 20% in the latest figures compared with the same quarter last year.
In other words, there are more ADHD drugs being prescribed because there are more patients in this category. And this is as far as it goes in providing any kind of explanation.
In September, besides a few other scattered articles, that was it. A rise in ADHD drugs prescriptions nearly double that of what has been seen in the past 10 years – typically this would be called a spike – and media outlets offer up just a few sparse articles.
Today, when these same terms are subjected to a Google search, there is, under the news section, an article of November 2nd in The New Statesman, and then another in The Telegraph dated October 22nd, but not the plethora of attention that would be expected.
Would it be reasonable to go out on a limb and speculate that maybe certain parties don’t want the public to be asking too many questions. Certainly, if this were properly reported, enough people would ask the question “WHY”, and with enough people asking this question, a serious answer would have to be given. A serious answer that would have to go the heart of the matter: who is really benefiting from the increased drug usage, and what effects are they having on the people taking them.
If people were truly fully informed about the drugs, the trends might show a very different story.
*Source: https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/prescription-cost-analysis-pca-monthly-data
