Premature ejaculation help on the NHS: how it varies across England

What help does the NHS offer for premature ejaculation?

The NHS offers three kinds of help for premature ejaculation: psychosexual counselling, techniques men practise themselves, and medicines (NHS: Ejaculation problems). In psychosexual counselling, a therapist works with a man, and his partner if he has one, on relationship issues and teaches the squeeze and stop-go techniques. Both techniques need regular practice. The stop-go technique is also known as the stop-start technique.

Doctors use four groups of medicines for premature ejaculation:

• Dapoxetine (Priligy): a tablet designed for premature ejaculation, taken 1 to 3 hours before sex. Each local NHS area decides whether to prescribe it.
• Anaesthetic creams and sprays containing lidocaine or prilocaine.
• SSRI antidepressants, such as paroxetine, sertraline and fluoxetine, and the antidepressant clomipramine.
• Sildenafil (Viagra): an erectile dysfunction medicine that research suggests may also help with premature ejaculation.

Dapoxetine is not suitable for every man, including some men with heart, kidney or liver problems, so a GP decides which medicine fits. Without a prescription, the NHS suggests masturbating an hour or two before sex or using a thick condom.

How do you get premature ejaculation treatment on the NHS?

Premature ejaculation treatment on the NHS starts with a GP. The NHS advises men with a persistent ejaculation problem to see their GP, who will discuss it, may examine them and may refer them to a specialist. The NHS also advises involving a partner as much as possible.

In the twelve months to July 2026, NHS prescribers in England issued 8,424 prescriptions for premature ejaculation: 8,405 for dapoxetine tablets (99.8%) and 19 for a lidocaine and prilocaine spray.

Can you see a sex therapist on the NHS?

NHS sex therapy is available in some parts of England, not all. The NHS says some integrated care boards provide a sex therapy service and that availability can vary widely depending on where you live.

Body Zen checked public NHS listings of psychosexual and sex therapy services for all 36 NHS areas in England. It found a listed service in 27 areas, could not find one in 5, and could not tell from the listings in 4. The five areas without a publicly listed service are Norfolk and Suffolk, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Northamptonshire, and Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

Sixteen of the 27 listed services name premature ejaculation among the problems they treat. None clearly accepts self-referral, so men are usually referred by a GP. Waits can be long: University Hospitals Bristol reported an average wait of about 12 months in April 2025. The check covers public listings only; NHS teams whose service is missing can send details to hello@bodyzen.app.

Where in England does the NHS prescribe most for premature ejaculation?

North East London prescribes most for premature ejaculation, at 123.5 prescriptions per 100,000 men in the year to July 2026: almost double the next area and 3.7 times the England average of 33.5. Birmingham and Solihull (66.8), the Black Country (62.6), South Yorkshire (62.0) and Greater Manchester (57.8) complete the top five.

Greater Manchester’s local formulary lists dapoxetine as “do not prescribe”, yet the area issued 748 prescriptions for premature ejaculation, the third-highest total in England.

Where does the NHS prescribe least for premature ejaculation?

Norfolk and Suffolk prescribes least for premature ejaculation: 29 prescriptions in the year to July 2026, or 4.0 per 100,000 men. Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (4.5), Dorset (4.8), Derby and Derbyshire (6.8) and Devon (6.9) complete the bottom five.

In Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, 14 of the 22 prescriptions were for the anaesthetic spray, more than in any other area. Norfolk and Waveney decided in 2013 that the cost of dapoxetine did not justify routine NHS use; the area is now drawing up a men’s health strategy.

NHS premature ejaculation prescribing in your area: all 36 areas

Across England’s 36 NHS areas, prescribing for premature ejaculation ranges from 4.0 to 123.5 prescriptions per 100,000 men, against an England average of 33.5. A man’s NHS area is set by the GP practice he is registered with.

Twenty-four areas prescribe below the England average and 12 above it.

Do local NHS rules explain the difference in prescribing?

Local NHS rules do not explain the difference in prescribing on their own. A local formulary is the list of medicines an NHS area supports, and each area decides whether to include dapoxetine. Body Zen found a published formulary entry for dapoxetine in 24 of the 36 areas: 19 restrict it (non-formulary, red-listed or “do not prescribe”) and 5 allow it.

Four of the five highest-prescribing areas restrict dapoxetine, as do all five of the lowest. The data shows how often each area prescribes, not why.

How NHS prescribing for premature ejaculation has changed since 2022

NHS prescriptions for premature ejaculation in England rose 22% between 2022 and 2025, while their cost rose 44%.

Prescriptions in 2025

7,932

6,523 in 2022

NHS cost in 2025

£345,974

£239,681 in 2022

Gap between highest and lowest area

30×

123.5 vs 4.0 per 100,000 men

The average NHS cost per prescription rose from £36.74 in 2022 to £43.62 in 2025.

How common is premature ejaculation?

How common premature ejaculation is depends on how it is measured. In a survey of 12,133 men in the US, Germany and Italy, 22.7% reported low or no control over ejaculation that distressed them (Porst and colleagues, 2007). When 500 couples in five countries timed sex with a stopwatch, the median time to ejaculation was 5.4 minutes (Waldinger and colleagues, 2005).

The British Society for Sexual Medicine reports published estimates from 2% to 60% and links the spread to differences in the men studied, the methods and the definitions (2025 position statement). The NHS describes ejaculation problems as common in men.

What people in the UK search for when they need help

People in the UK search for the premature ejaculation tablet far more than for the techniques the NHS describes, even though the techniques need no prescription: about 9,800 Google searches a month for dapoxetine and Priligy, against about 430 for the stop-start and squeeze techniques.

Over the past five years, England has had the highest share of Google searches for “premature ejaculation” of the four UK nations. On Google Trends’ scale, England scores 100, Northern Ireland 83, Wales 80 and Scotland 75.

How this analysis was done

Body Zen built this analysis from public NHS data and public NHS listings. The method below lets anyone check it.

• Prescriptions: NHS England primary-care prescribing data for medicines used for premature ejaculation (BNF section 7.4.6: dapoxetine tablets and lidocaine/prilocaine spray), from OpenPrescribing, for August 2025 to July 2026 and for the calendar years 2022 to 2025.
• Rates: prescription items per 100,000 men aged 18 and over registered with a GP, from NHS England Digital, September 2026, across 36 integrated care boards.
• Local rules: each area’s published local formulary entry for dapoxetine, found for 24 of the 36 areas.
• Therapy services: public NHS listings of psychosexual and sex therapy services for each area, checked on 5 October 2026.
• Searches: Google Ads monthly search volumes and Google Trends, via DataForSEO, 5 October 2026.
• Not included: private and online prescriptions, which NHS data does not show. Prescriptions are counted as items, not tablets or patients.

The data shows how much each NHS area prescribes and what each lists publicly, not why rates differ.

Data downloads and press contact

The full data and the map are free to reuse with the credit “Source: Body Zen analysis of NHS England data”, linking to bodyzen.app.

• Download the data for all 36 areas (CSV)
• Download the map and chart (PNG)
• Download the dark version (PNG)

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<figure style="margin:0">
  <img src="https://bodyzen.app/assets/research/nhs-premature-ejaculation-prescribing-by-area-england.png"
       alt="Bar chart and map of England showing NHS prescriptions for premature ejaculation per 100,000 men by NHS area, from 123.5 in North East London to 4.0 in Norfolk and Suffolk"
       width="1600" height="1333" loading="lazy" style="max-width:100%;height:auto">
  <figcaption>Source: <a href="https://bodyzen.app/">Body Zen</a> analysis of NHS England prescribing data</figcaption>
</figure>

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Press contact: Nicola George, spokesperson for Body Zen, hello@bodyzen.app.