NHS mental health therapists pressurised to exaggerate success rates, expert claims

‘Actual human experience was secondary to creating data that would shore up the evidence base for the model to guarantee further investment,’ says one

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The provision of psychological treatment on the NHS has undergone an “Uberisation”, in which counsellors are pressurised to exaggerate their success in treating patients, a conference has heard.

Elizabeth Cotton, of Cardiff Metropolitan University, an expert in mental health at work, said that more than four in 10 – 41 per cent – of therapists working for the NHS’s talking treatments programme had been asked to manipulate data about patients’ progress.

The action is designed to improve the scheme’s apparent achievement rates, although NHS chiefs insist patients’ views are recorded when therapists are not present.