NHS: Mental Illness

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we have deliberately taken a generic approach to the NHS outcomes framework. That said, the framework for 2012-13 contains three improvement areas relating specifically to mental health: premature mortality in people with serious mental illness; employment of people with mental illness; and patient experience of community mental health services. Therefore, the noble Baroness is not quite right in what she has just said. Many of the indicators in the outcomes framework relate to all patients, including in relation to safety incidents, for example, or experience of primary care. Improving outcomes for people with mental health problems will be a crucial element of success.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, five out of the six recommendations of this excellent report by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, and his colleagues emphasise the importance of IAPT, an excellent initiative begun by the previous Government, which is being built on by the coalition Government. However, from the time of the previous Government to now, I continue to receive reports that psychotherapy departments, particularly those that provide non-cognitive behaviour therapies such as art therapies, psychodynamic psychotherapy, group analytic psychotherapy and family therapy, are closing down or are unable to get contracts. Can my noble friend help me to understand why that might be the case since, while CBT is valuable and helpful in many circumstances, it is not the only approach to treatment that has been demonstrated to be helpful in those who need psychological therapies?

[Earl Howe]

I am very happy to take the advice of my noble friend, who is of course an expert in this area. Historically, it is true to say that access to talking therapies in the broadest sense has been very poor. That is why we have invested £400 million in rolling out the IAPT programme, which makes available a range of NICE-recommended therapies to a much larger cohort of people. However, I will take my noble friend’s point away and, if I can throw any light on the issue that he has raised, I will gladly write to him.