Health: Parity of Esteem

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I am not sure that legislation is necessarily the right way forward, but perhaps we can pick up that issue with NHS England to ensure that it is written into the NHS mandate for next year. It is certainly something I will explore with them. It is worth noting that we are spending £94 million a year on IAPT for children, and we have increased spending on tackling eating disorders in young people by £150 million over the course of this Parliament. We are beginning to rectify what has historically been an area of huge underfunding of mental health for young people.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, I support the plea from the noble Lord, Lord Stone, to my noble friend on mindfulness. We have a very active mindfulness group in this Parliament and I hope that my noble friend will encourage all colleagues to sample it for themselves.

When people present at a GP surgery with mental health problems, there are still far too many GPs who reach for the prescription pad. If we really are to get parity of esteem, GPs need more training in mental health and need to be able to access referrals close to their surgery for talking therapies and other such solutions, rather than just reaching for the prescription pad.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My noble friend makes a very good point: reaching for medication is often not the right way forward. I am not sure how much time in the undergraduate syllabus is reserved for mental health training. However, I know that a considerable amount of time is set aside for it, so that people who decide to become GPs will have had some training in mental health before they qualify. Only last week, I was talking to Clare Gerada, who was the president of the Royal College of General Practitioners. She said that she thought the best combination of all was for a GP to have studied psychiatry as well.