Mental health: NICE gives go-ahead to eight digitally enabled therapies

Eight digitally enabled therapies to treat mental ill health, including depression and anxiety disorders, in adults have been conditionally recommended for approval by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

A consultation on the conditional recommendations is set to conclude this week. The digitally enabled therapies address depression and anxiety disorders, including PTSD and body dysmorphia.

Each includes support from and the involvement of an NHS Talking Therapies clinician and uses CBT techniques. NICE has argued that the, combined, the therapies have the potential to help more than 40,000 people.

Mark Chapman, interim director of medical technology and digital evaluation, at NICE, said: “Our rapid assessment of these eight technologies has shown they have promise.

“Developed using tried and tested CBT methods, each one has demonstrated it has the potential to provide effective treatment to the many thousands of people who live with these conditions.”

The technologies conditionally recommended are:

• For body dysmorphic disorder (BDD): ‘Perspectives’, with support provided by a high-intensity therapist trained in treating BDD.
• For generalised anxiety symptoms or unspecified anxiety disorder: ‘Beating the Blues’ and ‘Space from Anxiety’ (SilverCloud), with support provided by a psychological wellbeing practitioner or high-intensity therapist.
• For post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): ‘iCT-PTSD’ and ‘Spring’, with support from a high-intensity therapist trained in treating PTSD.
• For social anxiety disorder: iCT-SAD, with support provided by a high-intensity therapist who is trained in treating social anxiety disorder.
• For depression: ‘Beating the Blues’, ‘Deprexis’, and ‘Space from Depression’ (Silvercloud).

Separately, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England has said it intends to use artificial intelligence (AI) to help thousands of patients get quicker diagnoses and more accurate test results.

Nine of the most promising AI healthcare technologies will receive nearly £16m in government funding to accelerate research.

These will include technologies to run cancer checks, diagnose rare diseases and identify women at highest risk of premature birth.

Successful technologies will be fast-tracked into NHS to improve speed and accuracy of diagnoses, tackle waiting lists and free clinician time, NHS England said.

Health and Social Care secretary Steve Barclay said: “Artificial intelligence has the potential to speed up diagnoses and treatments and free up time for our doctors and nurses so they can focus on caring for patients.”