NICE anxiety guideline campaign

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) creates recommendations for care in the NHS. The NICE guideline for generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder in adults was initially published in 2011 and has not been meaningfully updated since.  

Meanwhile, the number of adults who have a common mental health condition like anxiety has been steadily increasing. Despite NHS Talking Therapies receiving almost half a million presenting complaints of either anxiety or stress related disorders in 2022-23, less than half of people that access treatment via NHS Talking Therapies reliably recover from their presenting issue (NHS Digital, 2024).  

Crucially, the guideline recommends no types of therapy for anxiety besides cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and applied relaxation. This severely limits the types of support patients with anxiety can access, including therapies that address the root causes of issues. 

Our campaign’s progress 

Since launching the campaign, we have focused on building broad support across the mental health sector to call for a review of the NICE guideline. 

As a first step, we developed a joint statement setting out our concerns about the guideline and the need for it to be reviewed. So far, we have gained signatures from 30 organisations across the mental health sector, including Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and the Centre for Mental Health. 

Find the campaign’s joint statement with the latest signatories.