Mental Health: Parity of Esteem

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we are investing £54 million over the four-year period from 2011 to 2015 in the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, CYP IAPT, programme. That, along with the measures that I referred to earlier, will, I hope, give a sense of the priority that we attach to children and young people’s mental health services.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister gave us a long list of things that the Government are doing. However, he does not mention research into mental health. Is not one of the key problems that clinicians are never able to identify the disease phenotype, and that makes further and better treatments impossible? Should there not be much more emphasis on the need to research mental ill health throughout the country?

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord is quite right about the importance of mental health research. Unfortunately I do not have the figures in my brief, but I will gladly write to him on the research that is currently under way which my department is helping to fund.