Health minister Ivan Lewis announced the 32 sites who will begin to roll out talking therapies around the country.

Each of the 32 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) will receive a share of the £33 million first instalment of new money announced for the purpose by Health Secretary Alan Johnson on World Mental Health Day last year (10 October).

The funds will help the NHS create a new workforce that can offer properly supervised low intensity and high intensity therapy, slashing waiting times for this kind of treatment and helping patients achieve a level of recovery that they can clearly see and which is in line with the evidence from clinical trials that has been independently reviewed by the national Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Care Services Minister Ivan Lewis said:

"This initiative will transform the way the NHS helps people with depression and anxiety disorders. It will help to reduce the stigma associated with mental health problems. I believe it is one of the most important advances for NHS services in a generation."

Over the next three years, 3,600 extra therapists will be trained and offer treatment to 900,000 people. In the first year, at least 700 therapists will be trained and see around 100,000 people.

Training places are expected to become available through the NHS Jobs website www.jobs.nhs from late June.

Notes

1. The country's 10 strategic health authorities have each chosen between two and five Primary Care Trusts to take this forward and a number of higher education institutions to deliver the newly developed national curricula for high- and low-intensity therapy workers from the autumn.

More PCTs will join the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme as further money comes on stream in the next two years - a total of £103 million in 2009-10 and rising to £173 million in 2010-11.

The programme began in 2006, with two pilot projects in Newham, East London, and Doncaster, in Yorkshire, focused on working-age adults. Between them, they saw 5,000 patients in a year and brought well over half of them to measurable recovery with the number going to work rising by 10 per cent.

In 2007, 11 PCTs began exploring the specific needs of one or more vulnerable groups including children and young people, new mothers, older people, black and ethnic minorities, offenders and people with long term conditions or medically unexplained symptoms.

2. The successful PCTs chosen to take part in the first year are:

NHS North West
Eastern and Central Cheshire
Western Cheshire
Knowsley
Salford
East Lancashire

NHS South West
Bournemouth and Poole
Cornwall and the isles of Scilly
Dorset
Swindon

NHS East of England
Bedfordshire
Cambridgeshire
West Hertfordshire

NHS Yorks and Humber
North Lincolnshire
Leeds
East Riding
Sheffield

NHS East Midlands
Nottingham City
Lincolnshire

NHS London
Camden
City and Hackney
Ealing

NHS West Midlands
Dudley
Shropshire
Stoke

NHS South East Coast
East Sussex Downs and Weald
Hastings and Rother
Brighton and Hove City
West Kent (locality)

NHS South Central
Buckinghamshire (locality)
Berkshire West (locality)

NHS North East
South Tyneside
North Tyneside

Department of Health, UK