Oldham has topped the charts as one of the top 10 areas in the country with the highest rates of patients accessing psychological therapy for mental illnesses.

The borough has been crowned as the fifth highest place in England when it came to referring patients with anxiety and depression for therapy in 2019 and 2020.

'Improving access to psychological therapies' (IAPT) is a service which provides psychological therapy to patients with mental illnesses and disorders, such as anxiety and depression.

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The service identifies those who are struggling and helps them to get easy access to the type of therapy that they need.

The new study by Now Patient, a digital health service that uses artificial intelligence, has analysed the country's health data to identify the areas with the highest percentage of anxiety and depression, as well as prescription rates for antidepressants and referral rates for therapy per the population.

The data reveals the former Oldham Clinical Commissioning Group area has some of the highest referral rates for therapy with 1,662 referrals per 100,000 people.

While Oldham comes in fifth place out of 10 on the list, Manchester comes first with the highest referral rate across the country with 2,436 referrals per 100,000 people.

Salford, Bolton and West Cheshire also score ahead of Oldham with 2,259, 2,237 and 1,788 referral rates per 100,000 people respectively. 

After Oldham, Hull came in sixth place (1,613 referrals) and Bury came in seventh (1,541 referrals).

However, despite the high prevalence of patients accessing therapy in Oldham, the study shows the borough has a lower rate of mental health disorders compared to the rest of the country.

City and Hackney clinical commission group have the highest prevalence of mental disorders in individuals aged 16 and above with 24.04 per cent of the population experiencing such problems.

Newham and Bradford City came second and third for the highest number of patients with mental health disorders per the population with 23.88 per cent and 23.67 per cent respectively. 

Meanwhile, Manchester scored low, coming in ninth place with 22.19 per cent of the population experiencing mental health disorders.

Analysing areas with the highest prevalence of depression and anxiety specifically, Knowsley, Liverpool and Halton had the highest rate across the country with 21.27 per cent, 19.30 per cent and 19.20 per cent of the population reporting symptoms respectively.

However, Salford isn't far behind with 18.65 per cent of the population suffering from depression or anxiety.

Yet while Manchester had a lower percentage rate of depression or anxiety, with just 17.84 per cent reporting issues, the city bagged the top spot for the highest number of prescriptions being given to patients for antidepressants in November 2022.

Manchester saw 33,027 prescriptions handed out per 100,000 people towards the end of last year with almost 75,000 prescriptions provided for sertraline and 53,491 prescriptions for citalopram hydrobromide.

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