Request

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following information:

• The amount of the top five most commonly prescribed antidepressants (SSRIs) per month in 2023 in England (all regions)

• The amount of the top five most commonly prescribed antidepressants (SSRIs) per month in 2024 in England (all regions)

• The amount of the top five most commonly prescribed antidepressants (SSRIs) per month in 2025 in England (all regions) (please provide your latest data available for December)

Please note, upon a quick Google search, the top five most commonly prescribed SSRIs appear to be: Sertraline, Fluoxetine, Amitriptyline, Citalopram, and Mirtazapine - however, please feel free to correct this if I am incorrect.

Response

Under Section 21 of the FOIA we are not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you.

Prescribing data for antidepressants, including SSRIs, is available in the English Prescribing Dataset (EPD) published by NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA). This dataset includes monthly prescribing information for all medicines in England, including:

• Items (number of prescriptions)

• Quantity

• NIC (Net Ingredient Cost)

The EPD can be accessed via the NHSBSA Open Data Portal https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/english-prescribing-dataset-epd-with-snomed-code. Please note that the dataset contains over one million rows and cannot be fully opened in standard spreadsheet programs such as Excel. To access the data effectively, you will need to apply filters before downloading.

For SSRIs, you can filter using the BNF sub-paragraph code 0403030, which corresponds to “Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors.” To identify all relevant SSRIs, filter on all BNF chemical substance codes that begin with 0403030.

Further guidance on filtering large datasets is available in the NHSBSA user guide: https://scribehow.com/viewer/Download_English_Prescribing_Dataset_EPD_Filtered_Records_Step-by-Step__MJZhcJhaRB20YA2hn7qy1Q

Please note that full data for the year 2025 is not yet available as it is still being processed and validated. Data releases follow a scheduled timetable, and future publication dates can be found on the NHS Business Services Authority Data Release Calendar, available at: https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/data-release-calendar

Please see the following link to view the section 21 in full - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/21