£17m from Wellcome to analyse NHS talking therapy outcomes

Ben Goldacre is heavily involved in this.

Major investment to transform mental health treatment research and further develop secure NHS data platform

Major investment to transform mental health treatment research and further develop secure NHS data platform — Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford

SMC expert reaction:
expert reaction to the announcement of the expansion of the OpenSAFELY data platform | Science Media Centre

 

What’s the quality of the data they will look at? Garbage in, garbage out…

 

I can't be the only one reading this and finding that it's obviously blatantly biased towards being marketing material, with about zero serious research. It's almost comical how it's written. It's not even marketing research, it's pure marketing. Every single sentence is framed in a way that assumes this is all very effective and that the 'researchers' are expected to validate this, that this is why they are getting this money, in exchange for which they will pad their academic resume.

And they're obviously spending a ridiculous sum precisely to create the kind of sunk cost that raises clear expectations of "find good things, only good things, make this sell like hot cakes". The level of bias here is frankly on par with banana republics doing "Dear Leader" type of fake research. And for sure they will marvel at how Dear Leader is the best golfer in history, literally scored a 18 on his first-ever round of gold and decided to retire because it's just not fair to other lesser beings.

 

I’d reply but all I have is *sigh*

 

Uniquely, outcome data is collected from 98% of people who have a course of treatment.


I seriously doubt that! I had some NHS funded talking therapy last year (not in anyway connected to NHS ME clinics, would not go near those!)

All that is offered is some version of CBT, so what are they comparing. I was asked for some feedback after completion but felt so negative that I didn't want to reply immediately. It wasn't chased up.