Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan Debate
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Liz Twist
Main Page: Liz Twist (Labour - Blaydon and Consett)Department Debates - View all Liz Twist's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan
Liz Twist Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend mentioned the consultation and the enthusiasm of the respondents. YoungMinds, a great organisation dealing with young people’s mental health, had 14,000 young people commenting as part of that consultation. Is he as concerned as I am that their views will now be lost and that they will be dispirited?
Mr Jones
I congratulate YoungMinds on its great work. It is disappointing that many of those people will feel let down, that their perfectly legitimate concerns around the mental health of young people will not be taken into consideration in a broader strategy. I will come on to that, but I would like to make some progress.
The major conditions strategy covers cardiovascular disease, including stroke, respiratory disease, musculoskeletal disorders, dementia, and cancer. Those are some of the most challenging areas that face the NHS. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) just mentioned, much has been said about parity of esteem between mental and physical health. I am a passionate believer; I believe that the integrated whole approach is right and should be our aim. However, a co-ordinated approach does not simply scrap the plan for mental health and wellbeing, if that means, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central just outlined, that those will not actually be taken up or given the priority that they need.
If anything, trying to create change across a vast swathe of health in one strategy could risk dealing with none of the challenges that are faced in those different areas.