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Antidepressant prescribing in England by ICB, monthly

Antidepressant items and cost by Integrated Care Board and month, with each ICB's share of local prescribing.

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2,132rows

In the current release

May 2022 to June 2026

Coverage

June 2026

Latest data month

About this dataset

Monthly NHS prescription items and net ingredient cost for antidepressants (BNF section 4.3, antidepressant drugs) in English primary care, aggregated by Integrated Care Board, derived from the NHSBSA Prescription Cost Analysis. Includes items per 1,000 prescription items in the same ICB, so areas of different sizes can be compared. Also published as a national total. Updated monthly.

How it is derived

Every BNF presentation whose code begins 0403 is counted as antidepressant. Items and net ingredient cost are summed by ICB and month from the ICB-by-chemical summary, and the rate column divides those items by all prescription items in the same ICB and month, multiplied by 1,000. National rows are the sum across all ICBs.

What this data cannot tell you

  • 1 Antidepressants are prescribed for conditions other than depression, including anxiety disorders, neuropathic pain and migraine prophylaxis. Amitriptyline in particular is very largely prescribed at low dose for pain, so this series should not be read as a count of depression treatment.
  • 2 The rate is items per 1,000 prescription items in the same ICB, not per 1,000 people. Our warehouse holds no population denominator, and we would rather publish a rate we can derive than estimate one we cannot.
  • 3 Because the denominator is all local prescribing, the rate falls when other prescribing rises. It measures the share of prescribing, not how common treatment is in the population.
  • 4 Items count prescriptions dispensed, not patients. Differences in typical prescription duration between areas affect the counts.
  • 5 Prescribing is attributed to the prescriber's ICB, not the patient's home ICB.
  • 6 ICB-level data begins in May 2022, when the current boundaries came into force.

Antidepressant prescribing in England, by month

Items dispensed for BNF section 4.3, antidepressant drugs.

Antidepressant prescribing in England, by month02.5m5m7.5m10mJan 2021Oct 2021Jul 2022Apr 2023Jan 2024Oct 2024Jul 2025Jun 20268.2m

Source: NHSBSA English Prescribing Dataset OGL v3.0

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Chart licensed under CC BY 4.0 — attribution link to PharmaInsight required. Underlying data © NHSBSA, Open Government Licence v3.0.

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The first 20 rows of 2,132.

First rows of Antidepressant prescribing in England by ICB, monthly
month area_type icb_code icb_name nhs_region items net_ingredient_cost_gbp items_per_1000_prescription_items
2022-05 ICB QWU NHS Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board Midlands 114730 271513.24 70.28
2022-05 ICB QF7 NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board North East and Yorkshire 227845 432756.53 77.57
2022-05 ICB QVV NHS Dorset Integrated Care Board South West 93119 248934.12 71.56
2022-05 ICB QNC NHS Staffordshire and Stoke-on-trent Integrated Care Board Midlands 163935 372717.36 74.03
2022-05 ICB QKS NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board South East 204255 535070.64 70.83
2022-05 ICB QOQ NHS Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board North East and Yorkshire 237339 476052 71.18
2022-05 ICB QHM NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board North East and Yorkshire 602570 1054845.23 86.59
2022-05 ICB QRV NHS North West London Integrated Care Board London 271651 640074.21 69.47
2022-05 ICB QJM NHS Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board Midlands 134773 287664.72 73.62
2022-05 ICB QU9 NHS Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board South East 157775 479387.71 69.24
2022-05 ICB QPM NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board Midlands 105931 200894.87 77.1
2022-05 ICB QXU NHS Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care Board South East 77980 272338.88 66.27
2022-05 ICB QSL NHS Somerset Integrated Care Board South West 64156 160532.22 71.06
2022-05 ICB QUA NHS Black Country Integrated Care Board Midlands 141581 349722.02 65.22
2022-05 ICB QNQ NHS Frimley Integrated Care Board South East 62468 188941.5 67.17
2022-05 ICB QGH NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire Integrated Care Board Midlands 97468 230211.83 73.37
2022-05 ICB QWE NHS South West London Integrated Care Board London 121740 305939.19 62.25
2022-05 ICB QYG NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board North West 395990 879139.5 78.51
2022-05 ICB QNX NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board South East 202443 582688.12 72.89
2022-05 ICB QM7 NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board East of England 156254 386466.78 67.36

Licence and attribution

The underlying figures are NHS open data published by the NHS Business Services Authority under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

The derived dataset on this page — the aggregation, the columns and the rates — is free to reuse, including commercially. We ask that you credit PharmaInsight with a link when you do, which is what lets other people find their way back to the method and the caveats.

How to cite

Citing a figure in something durable? Use the pinned 2026-06 snapshot rather than the latest file — it will not change when next month's data lands.

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At a glance

  • Source NHSBSA Prescription Cost Analysis
  • Coverage May 2022 to June 2026
  • Latest data June 2026
  • Updates Monthly
  • Format CSV, UTF-8
  • Licence OGL v3.0
  • Geography England

Columns

  • month
  • area_type
  • icb_code
  • icb_name
  • nhs_region
  • items
  • net_ingredient_cost_gbp
  • items_per_1000_prescription_items

Where we use this data

Refresh

Monthly, within a few days of the NHSBSA publication. Last published 25 August 2026.

More open data

Browse the full dataset catalogue, the sources we import from, and our methodology.