Network summary

The Anxiety and Depression Network is focused on continuously improving psychological therapies for adults suffering with common mental health disorders.

Our vision is to consistently provide the right, NICE-recommended psychological treatments of the highest quality in a timely fashion so that more patients recover and enjoy better quality of life as a result of treatment.

The Anxiety and Depression Network works closely with all IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) services, their commissioners and academics at the cutting edge of psychological treatment research to reduce variability in outcomes through effective performance and patient outcome data analysis and by sharing innovation and research findings.

• To enhance recovery and reliable improvement rates and sustain these whilst taking more patients through treatment successfully, including older adults
• To support and disseminate service innovations for patients with chronic health problems whose management is complicated by the presence of anxiety and/or depression
• To better understand relapse rates for patients suffering with depression/anxiety disorders and to develop more effective post-discharge support mechanisms helping patients to stay well after treatment.

• Increasing numbers of patients achieving recovery or reliable improvement at the end of treatment whilst maintaining good patient outcomes
• Supporting new, integrated IAPT services for patients suffering with long-term physical conditions and depression/anxiety in the design and data collection for a health economics evaluation so that we can assess these new models of care robustly, both in terms of clinical outcomes and healthcare utilisation outcomes
• More effective post-discharge support for our patients to help them stay well after finishing treatment through the introduction of the therapy support app ‘Paddle’ and the new, integrated step 2 Staying Well protocol
• To improve access to psychological therapies for older people.