Mental Health Support

Debate between Luke Evans and John Glen

Thursday 10th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Dowd, for allowing me to take off my neck brace to speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) on speaking so powerfully on this topic. I was a doctor before I came to this House, so for me the topic is important. There is a clear distinction when we debate this topic between mental wellbeing and mental health. Lockdown proved that everyone’s mental wellbeing gets punished, but not everyone has a mental health issue. That is important when we are trying to segregate services: how do we supply the correct services to the people who need them the most?

I have spent the last five years in Parliament campaigning around body image and for a men’s health Minister, particularly with regard to suicide. But I turn my attention to something close to my heart that is really important: the issue of adolescent mental health, because I am deeply concerned by the increase in children who are suffering. It is not just things such as eating disorders; we are seeing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, we are seeing anxiety and we are seeing autism.

I plead with the new Minister to think radically, in a positive way, when it comes to the NHS. In my area of Leicestershire, 40% of child and adolescent mental health services is taken up by dealing with ADHD and autism. That takes a lot of attention away from the kids who are self-harming, or have eating disorders or significant serious depression or psychosis. There is a radical solution: pull out education and health and pool those services as specialisms. That would build on the work that the last Conservative Government did on placing representatives and mental health workers in school, and would allow GPs and CAMHS the freedom to concentrate on what they need to deal with.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

On that point, may I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the role of care co-ordinators with adolescents, and the problems and challenges of the transition to adult care? That moment can be critical in securing a pathway to an effective outcome. Often, the confusion over where responsibilities are delineated and begin has been a difficulty for my constituents.

[Dr Evans]

My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. The cliff edges that exist in the NHS—and education and social services—cause a real problem, particularly for families, because at 18 someone does not just lose their diagnosis.

It is important to pool those areas because it allows us to stratify the way that we use our limited resources, and we know that health costs will continue to go up and spiral. I urge the Minister to have a think about potentially creating almost a national special educational needs and disabilities service, which would pool education and health experts together, releasing schools and relieving GPs’ primary care and secondary care with specialists. Now we have the set-up of ICBs, there is scope to do that regionally across the 42 areas.

It is well worth thinking about pooling those resources together, because it would be possible to give specialist help; and as the hon. Member for Ashford said, identifying people early means that they will not end up in a crisis. That brings us back to preventive care, to identify those who are having problems with wellbeing or who have mental health issues. For me, that is the crux of what we need to do: how do we pool the resources in a way that is sustainable for the taxpayer and, most importantly, service users and providers—the children and adolescents, and the staff who have to cope with some of the most difficult problems? I leave the Minister with that thought.