Anxiety: A Very Short Introduction - Daniel Freeman, Jason Freeman 2012

What treatments are people receiving?
Treatment

As we’ve seen, official guidelines in the UK advocate the use of CBT to treat anxiety disorders. But how many people with anxiety disorders are actually receiving CBT — or indeed any other form of treatment?

Not nearly enough, would seem to be the inevitable conclusion when you look at the data from a survey carried out for the NHS in 2007. Here are the percentages of people receiving no treatment at all:

• Generalized anxiety disorder: 66%

• Phobias: 43%

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder: 69%

• Panic disorder: 75%

• Mixed anxiety and depressive episode: 85%

Here are the figures for people with anxiety disorders receiving medication only:

• Generalized anxiety disorder: 18%

• Phobias: 23%

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder: 12%

• Panic disorder: 8%

• Mixed anxiety and depressive episode: 11%

And now the figures for people with anxiety disorders receiving some form of counselling or therapy, either with medication or on its own, with the figure in bold denoting CBT:

• Generalized anxiety disorder: 15%; 3%

• Phobias: 34%; 11%

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder: 18%; 4%

• Panic disorder: 17%; 4%

• Mixed anxiety and depressive episode: 5%; 1%

One of the reasons CBT is so rarely used is a shortage of trained therapists. This is a situation the UK government has attempted to rectify by means of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies scheme, which was launched in 2007 with the aim of training 3,600 new therapists.