Ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status, Engagement and Outcomes in IAPT

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Investigating the relationship between client ethnicity, socioeconomic status and their relationship with service engagement and mental health outcomes in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services.

  • IRAS ID

    159364

  • Contact name

    Dean McMillan

  • Contact email

    dean.mcmillan@york.ac.uk

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    2 years, 0 months, 1 days

  • Research summary

    The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service is a government initiative to increase access to talking therapies for common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. A key aim of the programme is to ensure equality of access and outcome. The Department of Health (2011) has a number of explicit aims related to this, including: the proportion of patients using the IAPT service should be in line with community profiles and the recovery rates should be unaffected by factors such as ethnicity. However, little is currently known about how factors such as patient ethnicity and socioeconomic status influence service engagement and subsequent mental health outcomes.

    The proposed study will investigate whether there is a link between ethnicity, social deprivation and drop-out rates of patients using the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. The study will also evaluate the results for patients from different ethnic and socioeconomic groups who received psychotherapy through the IAPT programme to see if they are comparable, as well as examining whether the rate of referral by GP practices to the IAPT programme is the same for patients from different ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

    Reference:
    Department of Health. (2011). Talking Therapies: A four-year plan of action. London: Department of Health.

  • REC name

    Yorkshire & The Humber - Bradford Leeds Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    14/YH/1248

  • Date of REC Opinion

    31 Oct 2014

  • REC opinion

    Favourable Opinion