Concept Library

Code list taken from John et al (2016) John, A., Marchant, A. L., Fone, D. L., McGregor, J. I., Dennis, M. S., Tan, J. O. A., & Lloyd, K. (2016). Recent trends in primary-care antidepressant prescribing to children and young people: an e-cohort study. Psychological medicine, 46(16), 3315-3327.

This code list can be used to identify symptoms and diagnoses of depression. These have been previously validated and exclude codes for psychosis (John et al., 2016).

Code list taken from John et al (2015) John, A., Marchant, A. L., McGregor, J. I., Tan, J. O. A., Hutchings, H. A., Kovess, V., ... & Lloyd, K. (2015). Recent trends in the incidence of anxiety and prescription of anxiolytics and hypnotics in children and young people: an e-cohort study. Journal of affective disorders, 183, 134-141.

The Read codes and algorithms being used to identify a new episode of symptoms/diagnoses of anxiety have been developed and utilised in previous research (John et al., 2016; Walters, Rait, Griffin, Buszewicz, & Nazareth, 2012) These included GP recording of i) diagnoses of anxiety e.g. chronic anxiety, generalised anxiety disorder, anxiety state, ii) anxiety symptoms e.g. anxiousness, iii) mixed anxiety and depression, iv) panic attacks and panic disorders. We included emotional disorders with an onset usually in childhood but excluded codes for phobias, obsessive compulsive disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, behavioural disorders, hyperkinetic disorders, conduct disorders and disorders of social functioning in keeping with other studies (Rait et al., 2009; Walters et al., 2012; Wijlaars, Nazareth, & Petersen, 2012). We excluded adjustment disorders as conceptually they are an intermediate health condition between normal responses to stress and more severe emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression (Casey & Doherty, 2012).