About the Speaker

Prof. David Clark

David M Clark is the Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is well-known for his pioneering work on the understanding and psychological treatment of anxiety disorders: especially panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, health anxiety and PTSD. David and his team have successfully developed and evaluated online versions of their social anxiety and PTSD treatments.  Recently, he has also focused on the general problem of how to disseminate effective psychological treatments within healthcare systems and is one of the architects of the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. Currently, the IAPT programme treats around 670,000 people with depression or anxiety disorders each year and reports clinical outcomes on almost everyone. 2 in every 3 treated people reliably improve and 50% recover. David is the UK Government’s Clinical and Informatics Advisor for the program. He has received numerous awards and prizes, including Lifetime Achievement awards from the British and American Psychological societies.

SPEECH TITLE

“Realizing the Mass Public Benefit of Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies (the IAPT story)”

Abstract

Psychological therapies can help people overcome common mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety related disorders. However, in most countries the majority of people with common mental health problems receive no treatment. Among those who do receive treatment, medication is more common. This talk tells the story of the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. Around 10,000 psychological therapists have been trained in cost-effective psychological therapies. A unique outcome monitoring system allows the services to collect pre- and post-treatment measures of depression, anxiety, and mental health related disability on 99% of the people who have a course of treatment (currently around 670,000 per year). Outcomes are broadly in line with expectation from clinical trials. Approximately 7 in every 10 (68%) of treated individuals reliably improve and in 5 out of 10 (52%) fully recover. Several other countries are now following the IAPT model.

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