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.
In the current release
Coverage
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.
Source: NHSBSA English Prescribing Dataset OGL v3.0
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Preview
The first 20 rows of 2,169.
| month | area_type | icb_code | icb_name | nhs_region | items | net_ingredient_cost_gbp | items_per_1000_prescription_items |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-05 | ICB | QHL | NHS Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board | Midlands | 128433 | 307294.92 | 62.59 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QT6 | NHS Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board | South West | 85779 | 198084.17 | 76.77 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QGH | NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire Integrated Care Board | Midlands | 97468 | 230211.83 | 73.37 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QKS | NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board | South East | 204255 | 535070.64 | 70.83 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QR1 | NHS Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board | South West | 85786 | 199392.05 | 78.49 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QJG | NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board | East of England | 157725 | 355038.5 | 81.4 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QWE | NHS South West London Integrated Care Board | London | 121740 | 305939.19 | 62.25 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QOQ | NHS Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board | North East and Yorkshire | 237339 | 476052 | 71.18 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QJK | NHS Devon Integrated Care Board | South West | 157989 | 386096.76 | 74.37 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QXU | NHS Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care Board | South East | 77980 | 272338.88 | 66.27 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QT1 | NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board | Midlands | 153991 | 341817.28 | 75.07 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QF7 | NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board | North East and Yorkshire | 227845 | 432756.53 | 77.57 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QYG | NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board | North West | 395990 | 879139.5 | 78.51 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QKK | NHS South East London Integrated Care Board | London | 130680 | 342607.91 | 63.67 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QPM | NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board | Midlands | 105931 | 200894.87 | 77.1 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QJ2 | NHS Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board | Midlands | 138940 | 314665.08 | 80.25 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QVV | NHS Dorset Integrated Care Board | South West | 93119 | 248934.12 | 71.56 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QOP | NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board | North West | 418688 | 919354.43 | 76.19 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QRV | NHS North West London Integrated Care Board | London | 271651 | 640074.21 | 69.47 |
| 2022-05 | ICB | QNQ | NHS Frimley Integrated Care Board | South East | 62468 | 188941.5 | 67.17 |
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 2026-07 snapshot rather than the latest file — it will not change when next month's data lands.
Download
-
antidepressant-prescribing-icb-latest.csv
2,169 rows · 216 KB · always current
-
antidepressant-prescribing-icb-2026-07.csv
Pinned snapshot of the July 2026 release — use this in citations
At a glance
- Source NHSBSA Prescription Cost Analysis
- Coverage May 2022 to July 2026
- Latest data July 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 12 October 2026.
More open data
Browse the full dataset catalogue, the sources we import from, and our methodology.