Overview

• A retrospective cohort study in The Lancet Psychiatry found 16–24-year-olds were 25% less likely to achieve reliable recovery and 17% less likely to show significant improvement than those aged 25–65.
• The analysis covered 1.5 million NHS talking therapy users in England between 2015 and 2019, including more than 309,000 people aged 16–24.
• Researchers estimate that matching therapy effectiveness across age groups could have produced over 20,000 additional recoveries among young adults during the study period.
• UCL experts and charities are urging NHS England to adapt service design, delivery methods and therapeutic approaches to address young people’s transitional life stresses and higher nonattendance rates.
• The NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme continues to deliver evidence-based treatments such as CBT, counselling and guided self-help to over a million people each year with 90% receiving support within six weeks.