The all-party pharmacy group (APPG) has called on the government to extend the new medicine service (NMS) to include antidepressants.

There had been “unanimous” support for the move at an APPG meeting in February on improving mental health care, the group said in a letter to the government, sent on March 27.

The APPG said it recognised the NMS would need to be extended beyond its current timeframe of five weeks for patients on antidepressants because they took longer to have an effect than other medicines included in the service. It asked the Department of Health and NHS England if they agreed the move would benefit patients and, if so, called for them to come up with an implementation plan.

“The general consensus of [our] meeting was that pharmacy is well placed to be doing more to support patients with mental health conditions. In cases where pharmacists have been given this opportunity, the outcomes have been extremely encouraging,” said APPG chair Kevin Barron in the letter.

“We believe if pharmacy teams were given the opportunity to develop this, it would be significantly beneficial to patient care,” Sir Kevin said.

Support for expanding the NMS to include antidepressants was also expressed in a previous APPG meeting on the service, he added.

The letter was co-signed by charities Diabetes UK, Alzheimer’s Research UK, and researchers from the University of Nottingham, who carried out an evaluation of the NMS last year.

The APPG’s letter echoed the view of leading mental health expert Allan Young, who told C+D in February that adding antidepressants to the NMS would be an "innovative way" of improving compliance.
 

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