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.