A Genealogical Investigation of the Conditions of Possibility for the Emergence of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) Services

The purpose of this research was to investigate the conditions of possibility for
the emergence of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services
as a dominant service-provision model. The research undertook a text-based
genealogical analysis which drew upon the works of Foucault. The data
consisted of 116 publicly available documents. A collection of dispositifs were
plotted onto a visual map in order to examine the system of relations between
key elements, and their strategic functions. Three nexus points from the map
were selected as key conditions of possibility for IAPT’s emergence; the
creation of the ‘third way’ by New Labour, the role of clinical psychologists in
research and government and the convergence of discourses constructing
unemployment. This research suggests that scientific constructions of research
strengthened medical and economic discourses of mental ‘disorder’, which
legitimised the neoliberal and capitalist ideology through which IAPT emerged.
Through this process, mental distress was constructed as an individual
problem, and unemployment as individual pathology. This enabled the proposal
of therapy as a solution, whilst subjugating discourses of social justice and
interventions at a community- or political-level.