Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) children under the age of 16, (b) teenagers aged 16 to 17 and (c) young people aged 18 to 21 were prescribed anti-depressants in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

No data is captured relating to the clinical indication a prescription is intended for. Some antidepressant drugs can be used for a variety of clinical indications and therefore the figures provided may include items which may have been prescribed for a different condition. The list of antidepressants which have been identified for this response are those listed within British National Formulary (BNF) chapter 4 section 3 (Antidepressant Drugs).

The NHS Business Services Authority only holds data relating to patient ages from April 2015. Therefore, the data attached is for the three full years for which there is data available.