Skin Conditions and Mental Health

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I commend the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) both on having secured this debate and on his ongoing work in, and commitment to, this area. He introduced his comments by saying that yet again, he had had more ridicule through an email, which is appalling. He stands up for people, and I am sure that that is well appreciated by fellow sufferers.

The APPG’s report is very powerful. It is very sobering that, despite similar reports in 2003 and 2013, so little has changed for people suffering from these conditions, both from childhood and among adults and people who are older. The link between skin conditions and deterioration of emotional and psychological wellbeing are well documented, and have been for some time. As we have heard said so eloquently this afternoon, people with skin conditions report that they have experienced social isolation, stigmatism, depression, anxiety and in some cases suicidal thoughts and, indeed, action. There is also strong evidence to suggest that, although people with skin conditions have much higher rates of common mental health conditions, they struggle to access psychological support. Members have given some very good examples from among their constituents. This is particularly prevalent in children, as the hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) discussed. The APPG’s survey found 98% of respondents stating that their condition impacts their mental health, and only 18% saying that they could access support.

The rise of social media has exacerbated these problems. As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) has said, children and young people with these conditions are particularly reporting bullying and being mocked on social media, all of which we obviously condemn. We cannot disagree with all the evidence that has been presented today—the reports and recommendations on what is needed to support people. It is very clear, Minister: we need to improve access to specialist support, improve training and awareness through the health service, commission more psychodermatology services, improve staffing, support further research, and encourage further integration between psychology, psychiatry and dermatology. The Government need to do much more to support these people, particularly those who are battling through the primary and secondary care interface—I am particularly thinking about parents who are trying to do so. The IAPT service, with which I have worked in my previous career with the health service, offers a route through. However, as all of us know from our constituencies, IAPT is heavily over-subscribed and really struggling with current caseloads.

In the final few moments of my speech, I will pick up on the issue of teledermatology. Although people over the past 20 years might not have experienced much difference in services, the world has changed quite considerably in those 20 years. A decade ago, I was a commissioner for a primary care trust—now they are CCGs—of a teledermatology service, encouraging GPs to use that service as a way of supporting them, providing better link-in to secondary specialist care, and ultimately providing a better, quicker, more responsive service to local people, particularly for parents who can sit with children and avoid trips into hospital. It was clinically led, working with the private sector, new technology and willing GPs, and it was innovative. It was incredibly hard to achieve: at some point, I may share my stories of trying to implement a new service in the NHS. It is not easy, because new practice is always hard to achieve and savings and effectiveness are hard to demonstrate.

Although as we have heard, covid has made the situation much worse for many people, the pandemic has provided a catalyst for some rethinking of how we deliver services. Though I heed the warning in the report —also made by hon. Members today—about the loss of face-to-face services and about how important those are, I think that we can learn some lessons. With waiting lists at 6 million people and rising rapidly, I wonder how the Government will make developments in this area, as well as in many others, without thinking about more radical approaches, while clearly bringing people with them. Technology and digital access provide some of the solutions.

I have a number of questions for the Minister. Given the clarity of the evidence, will she outline how she would support embedding innovation and the lessons of the pandemic to create a more responsive, faster and better service? Will she outline how she will work with her counterparts in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to deal with online bullying about skin conditions, which we have also talked about today? It would be helpful to understand the Government’s strategy on employing and training more psychodermatologists and, indeed, how the Minister will support GP training so that GPs understand the effect on people’s mental health of skin conditions, again as has been so eloquently outlined over the past two decades.

What plans does the Department have to invest in further research into psychodermatology and the wider mental health implications of skin-related diseases, as the right hon. Member for Gainsborough mentioned? I sincerely hope that we are not all here in another decade’s time, with another report from the APPG saying the same things. I am sure that we would all like to see some progress for people suffering from the mental trauma of their poor skin conditions.