Psychological Therapies

Debate between James Morris and Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[James Morris]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She has done a tremendous amount of work in that area. I totally agree with her point; we need to shift our emphasis towards much more early intervention and ensure that the issue she identifies is addressed.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

The burden of the hon. Gentleman’s address today concerns the therapies necessary to deal with mental health difficulties, but surely, as my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) identified a few moments ago, the problem for the under-10s age group is that more research is needed into how a person under 10 is taken down the dark path of mental illness. We must find out what the problem is, as well as identify some of the treatment.

[James Morris]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The chief medical officer is producing recommendations about children and young people’s mental health care, which will specifically look at evidence on why the prevalence of such difficulties is increasing. She is becoming concerned about the growing problem.

A consequence of no guaranteed or set waiting time is that thousands of people are awaiting referral while suffering severe anguish. A constituent of mine who is suffering from a relatively severe mental health problem has received a referral, but is still waiting for treatment. That wait has been going on for a long time and he is in a state of severe anxiety and anguish. That is the direct human consequence of the situation. We need to move towards a waiting time target. I know people are wary of talking about targets, but such targets speak to a parity issue in the health service. If we have waiting time targets for severe physical illness, it is surely right that we move towards waiting time targets for access to appropriate psychological therapies. Appropriate access builds in choice, meets the needs of individual patients and moves us away from the monolithic approach I described earlier.

When responding to the debate, I ask the Minister to consider the following points. We urgently need further research into the efficacy of long-term psychological treatments. We need more holistic research combined with a more flexible NICE regime; as I said, Professor Haslam recently acknowledged that work is needed on the way that NICE approaches recommendations in that area. We need to give serious thought to a new commissioning model assisted by some of the reforms that have been brought into the NHS, such as commissioning groups, and building on the any qualified provider model, which brings choice and capacity into the NHS by allowing the highly professional cohort operating in the private sector to provide therapy on the NHS through IAPT.

Would the Minister seriously consider making or at least working towards a commitment to a 28-week waiting time target for access to psychological therapies? Too many people are in a state of anxiety about when they will get treatment and what that treatment will be. We need urgent action, as other hon. Members have said, to ensure that the IAPT programme is further developed for younger people and children and we need to commit to further research into what is causing the disturbing trend in mental illness among our young people. We also need urgent action to ensure that older people are not locked out of the IAPT programme. The debate is about more than the right policies; it is important because we must address the anguish and suffering of our fellow citizens whose voices desperately need to be heard and whose stories are often the key to their cure.