Mental Health Services

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those debates where we find ourselves addressing the ground very close to the subject we are covering tonight, because we have been there before.

The primary thread through this is the fact that those who have stressful lives are going to experience a slightly higher occurrence of mental health problems. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, and I have taken part in several debates where we talked about people with disabilities and how they are going to have a slightly higher occurrence of mental health problems because their lives are more stressful. Every time that occurs, we are going to find more mental health problems. The problem is the fact that we have not, until very recently, acknowledged that this is what is going on. We have a historical problem which we are now starting to address. I do not know if we are coming up with more solutions with this Government, but at least we are acknowledging the problem and taking the first step.

Will the Minister give us some assurances about where we are improving training in recognising this problem? We have identified the fact that where people are under greater stress, anxiety and depression are going to be more common. What are we doing to make sure that those who are dealing with this recognise the underlying problems and intervene early? Every time we delay dealing with these problems, behaviour gets entrenched and educational problems become more pronounced.

The problem with the education system is that children and young people are on a conveyor belt. If they slip at any stage, they have to run very fast to catch up. Mental health will account for some of that slippage. When mental health issues occur with a special educational need, a situation is created where the child is under even more stress and dropping out is only the short-term survival mechanism. What are we doing to address this?

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, addressed the point that care workers are undertrained to recognise this problem. They do not know what is going on. I think the Government have recognised that GPs do not have enough training to spot the problem early enough to push clients towards services. It may be the case that, as in many of these things, if you are going to have a problem, choose your parents well, and they will battle through for you. But, without that backing, children do not get that thrust to intervention and we end up with this point of crisis intervention and it tends to be papering over the cracks. Will my noble friend give the House some idea about the general strategy of making sure that there is greater awareness of the importance of early intervention? Without that we will carry on papering over cracks.