Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Mental Health Services

The following table shows the number of patients referred to specialist obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) treatment centres that have been reported by financial year and service line:

People with OCD are generally treated through a stepped model of care. Tiers one to five comprise support delivered across primary care, NHS Talking Therapies, community mental health services, and secondary mental health services, including psychological therapies and pharmacological interventions. NHS England commissions highly specialised Tier six services, which represent the highest level of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s stepped-care pathways, and which are reserved for a small proportion of adults, children, and young people with severe, treatment-resistant OCD, who have exhausted appropriate treatment options available through local services, including evidence-based cognitive behavioural therapy and medication.

As a result, duplication may occur where an individual patient has been referred in multiple financial years and/or has been referred to both the children and young people's and adult services at different points in time.

The total recorded referrals across the period 2021/22 to 2025/26 equate to 951. However, the distinct number of individual patients referred across the same period is 744.