Mental Health Taskforce Report

Anne Main Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. Congratulations are due to my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) on securing the debate.

The report is very important. In the short time available I want to touch on two problems that people with mental health issues have, which the report focuses on and which many of us will have encountered in our constituencies. If people are young their problems are with schooling, family disruption and access to services. If they are older they may struggle to get work. There is often a lack of support to enable people with mental health issues who are in work to keep their job, and a lack of employers who understand the often sporadic nature of mental illnesses.

I am a patron of Mind in mid-Hertfordshire and a supporter of its “Time to Talk” campaign, and I welcome the investment in talking therapies discussed in the report. However, the employment rate for people with mental health issues is still far too low. In 2012 I and, I am sure, many other Members of Parliament, supported the “Way to Work” campaign that Mind championed. I presented a little trophy to an employer that took on employees with mental health conditions, but sadly the take-up among employers in St Albans was very low, and nothing further happened.

It is worrying that too many companies find ways not to employ someone with mental health issues, particularly if an episode of ill health has resulted in absenteeism. I would like to know what more the Government can do to work with employers and show them how they can manage a workforce in which there may be mental health issues in much the same way as they would if there were people with disabilities. I do not think enough is done to bring people into the workforce and show how they can be supported in their periods of good health and ill health.

On the subject of young people, I have been told of people having trouble in dealing with CAMHS. A recurrent theme is having sporadic meetings with a lot of different people. I learned of the sad case of a very young lad who experienced extreme mental health problems. He had problems going to school, and in the end it became too difficult for him to get there. With regard to getting home schooling, he has almost dropped off the teaching rota. The lad is housebound because of his severe anxiety. There is not enough support for his parents, or for other families with young people living with mental health issues. The mother had to give up work, and the family could never go anywhere. They could not go on holiday. There was no real support for the family in their situation. We need a more holistic approach that deals with the family rather than just treating the young person with the mental health issues.

I have a few questions for the Minister. What will the Government do to improve access to talking therapies and specialist back to work support for older people who have mental health problems? What more is being done to help people find and stay in work? What more is the Department for Work and Pensions doing to integrate services for young people, to make sure that when they have problems with the education system and getting access to services, they get the right information in a timely fashion? If someone recovers from a mental illness that they had when young, whether that was self-harming or, as in the case I mentioned, agoraphobia, they may be set up for a life of failure because their education went out of the window during a formative period.

What more can be done to help people who had mental ill health when they were younger and did not have a good experience in the education system? What more can be done to support them to get their lives back on track when their mental health improves? I would like a co-ordinated approach. At whatever age a person presents with mental illness, they should be assessed holistically. If there have been gaps in their training to get into work or in their education, extra resources must be put in to ensure that when they are well, they can move on with their lives like the rest of us. That would be much like our approach to people in prisons, who often have mental health issues.

We are subjecting many young people to a life in prison if we do not allow them to be trained up and get the help they need. Otherwise, they will end up in a life of crime, because when they leave school or are at school leaving age they will have little to offer any employer. We need to ensure that those people’s lives are not snuffed out and wasted at an early age, and that they have the chance to form a life for themselves and their families.