A new NHS pilot in Gloucestershire gives 12 GP practices the ability to prescribe Forest Green Rovers football tickets to patients with mild to moderate depression. It’s part of a movement towards replacing a purely medical model – think: what antidepressants should we prescribe? – to a social and community model of care. Initiatives like this are easy to mock for being insufficient to address the huge strains faced by the NHS. And, for better or worse, may lead to an increase in people seeking care for depression in the hope of free football tickets. But this sort of thing has been supported by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, as part of his efforts to change the NHS from a sickness treatment system to a preventive health service.
The rationale is that GPs are overwhelmed, with patients showing up with issues such as back and neck pain, depression and anxiety, or just overall fatigue, headaches and feeling unwell. The medical approach is to prescribe medications – in fact, the NHS in 2023-24 prescribed more than 89m antidepressant courses (for an estimated 8.7 million identified patients who received at least one drug) – at great cost to both individuals, given the side-effects, and to the budget of the health service.
