Women’s Mental Health

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes with concern the rise in mental ill health among women, with one in five now experiencing common mental disorders and young women the most at-risk group; recognises that women’s mental health problems are often rooted in experiences of violence and abuse; believes that mental health services often fail to respond to women’s specific needs, including their experiences of trauma; calls on the Government to ensure that the gender- and trauma-informed principles of the Women’s Mental Health Taskforce are adopted by mental health services and that women’s mental health needs, including their experience of violence and abuse, are prioritised and taken seriously in all mental health policy, strategy and delivery.

Constituents often come to us at their lowest point, and we see them going through anxiety, depression and trauma. Poor mental health affects not only the individual, but everybody around them. Women are far more likely to experience serious mental health issues. Young women are at the greatest risk, with one in five having self-harmed and 13% having been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Over the course of this Parliament, there has been a great deal of talk in this House about mental health, which is progress, but the opportunity to discuss women’s specific needs when it comes to mental health services has been limited. Ten months after the publication of the final report of the Women’s Mental Health Taskforce, little has changed. There is a long way to go before our mental health services work for women. There is an obligation on Government to step in and respond to the growing crisis in women’s mental health with a substantive policy.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the work of the Women’s Mental Health Taskforce, its report, and the principles laid out in it. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that those principles will not be effectively implemented unless there are clear targets and concrete commitments from the Government, and that the next stage needs to be a full strategy on women’s mental health, with those targets and commitments in it?

[Wera Hobhouse]

I could not agree more. We need a strategy. More than half of women who experience mental ill health have a history of abuse, meaning that their conditions are rooted in experiences of gender-based violence. In yesterday’s moving debate, we heard many harrowing examples of that. We have a long way to go if we are to change the whole culture around domestic violence and treat its consequences. When it comes to treatment, we must ensure that frontline mental health services for women are trauma-informed. There is a legal framework that we could use; it is called the Istanbul convention. We signed up to it back in 2012, but so far we have failed to bring it into domestic law.

One consequence is that we do not have enough rape crisis centres across the country. Earlier this year, Fern Champion, a survivor of sexual violence, came forward after being turned away by her local rape crisis centre. She launched a petition asking the Government to ratify the Istanbul convention, which has so far received 171,000 signatures. It is hard to suggest that we can do the groundwork to support women and their mental health challenges effectively when there are fewer than 100 rape crisis centres across England and Wales. This is simply not good enough if we are to support women effectively and prevent them from developing serious mental health problems after suffering abuse. Ratifying the Istanbul convention would mean that the UK was upholding international standards on survivors’ rights.

Earlier this year, I tabled a Bill that would guarantee mothers a health check-up six weeks after giving birth. Depression before, during and after birth is a serious condition that is unrecognised and untreated for nearly half of new mothers who suffer from depression. Statistics suggest that mothers are afraid to speak up, and 47% of new mothers get less than three minutes to discuss their mental health with a healthcare professional. Conversations about the reality of motherhood and perinatal depression are still few and far between. This is a huge problem—and not just for the mother; undiagnosed mental health problems in mothers have serious consequences for the newborn child and their development.

I have been campaigning for better treatment of eating disorders. Eating disorders disproportionately affect women, although they do not discriminate. Women in the LGBTQ community are particularly susceptible.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am absolutely in accord with the hon. Lady. Before she gets off the subject of perinatal illness, she will agree, I am sure, that it is a shocking statistic that in the UK, suicide is the leading cause of direct maternal deaths occurring within a year of the end of pregnancy. Perinatal mental illness can actually lead to a loss of life among mothers. We need to do so much better for them in those early mental health checks.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Absolutely. Post-natal depression is hidden, and the NCT’s “Hidden Half” campaign addresses that. Anyone who has been a parent knows that parenthood is not easy. Probably all mothers go through some form of depression, or feel really down after birth. I keep saying that if anybody had asked me how I felt, I would probably have said, “Oh God, I am not feeling particularly well.” The problem is in not addressing that early on, because these things can develop into something much more serious. That is why it is very important that there be a check-up six weeks after birth for women, not just for the newborn child.

[Jeff Smith]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again; she is being very generous. A number of my constituents have been in touch about perinatal check-ups. My constituent Catherine told me of her experience:

“I asked for a 6 week check with a GP—this was, at best, brief. Physical symptoms were looked at, but nothing was checked with regards to my mental health. There needs to be a standard physical and mental health check for ALL new mothers.”

Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to do better?

[Wera Hobhouse]

Yes indeed. I talk to campaigners, who are now looking at the new general practitioner contracts that are going out. That is definitely a way forward, but we also need to ensure adequate training, because people have to ask the right questions. The issue is sort of stigmatised; everybody thinks, “You’re a new mum—you should be on top of the world.” Nobody really wants to admit that motherhood can be very difficult, and that one does not always feel great. We need training, so that when new mums come in, they are asked the right questions.

Going back to eating disorders, they have the highest mortality rate of all mental health conditions. There are about a million sufferers from eating disorders. That is an epidemic of illness that is going undiagnosed and untreated. We must do much better. Our NHS is not well equipped to spot the problem early and treat it. Waiting times for adults have been shooting up over the last few years. Outdated methods, such as the body mass index measurement, are still being used to diagnosis the condition, but that fails to recognise that at the core of an eating disorder is a mental health, not a physical health, problem. Despite increasing public and professional awareness of eating disorders, medical students receive only two hours of training in the condition and its treatment during their entire time in medical school.

Those are just a few examples of where our NHS does not work for women’s mental health. We need a strategy. The Women’s Mental Health Taskforce did some extremely important work, but its recommendations have been left on the shelf. A Government strategy would help individual trusts to make the changes required to implement the recommendations. The Liberal Democrats have championed the fight for better mental health care for many years, and we believe that mental and physical health should be supported equally by our services. I have highlighted a few areas where women’s mental health provision could be improved, and I am looking forward to the debate and to the Minister’s response.

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

As a man, I make no apology for contributing to this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I come from a household in which four of my five children are women. My late mother had a big role in my life and, of course, I do have a wife. I am prepared to say that I think women are the fairer sex but, by and large, they do have the tougher deal in life. I certainly would never fancy giving birth to a baby, and there are so many other things that women face that men do not.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on allowing us to debate this subject. I agree with all her points, and I just want to pick out a few other subjects that colleagues may not talk about later in the debate. With World Mental Health Day just one week away, I am pleased that the hon. Lady has secured this debate because, as she said, reports indicate that one in six people has experienced a common mental health problem in the past week—truly shocking. With a population of roughly 65 million in the UK, almost 11 million people need to access publicly funded support. The prevalence of mental health issues is similar for men and women in the UK but, as I have said already, women have to deal with different challenges. The House of Commons Library’s superb briefing on this topic makes it clear that the greater caring responsibilities and a high risk of domestic violence are contributing factors to the challenges that we are discussing today.

I was not in the Chamber yesterday for the Second Reading of the Domestic Abuse Bill—I was in my House of Commons office—but I was dumbfounded by the speeches. The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) may sit on the Opposition Benches, but she is a thoroughly wonderful colleague in every respect. She has had some terrible issues to deal with over the past few months and beyond, and I think of her struggle and hope that colleagues are rallying round to support her. We then heard the speech from the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) the likes of which I have never heard before. It was so brave and truly shocking, but she was prepared to share that with colleagues. The hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) then told us about her life and I just could not believe it. It must have taken enormous guts and courage to speak publicly about it, knowing that all sorts of people on social media are going to pick up on the issue while not necessarily being sympathetic. It was a wonderful debate, and I absolutely agree with Mr Speaker that the tone used yesterday and today is far better than that used in recent months.

Women are more likely than men to experience anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and eating disorders, as the hon. Member for Bath said. We need to recalibrate entirely how the media put ideas into young women’s minds about how they should look and how they live their lives. There is so much pressure on them to have the perfect figure or the perfect look, which is unreasonable and definitely adds to mental health issues. The suicide rate for young women has more than doubled in the past 10 years, which is shocking. Such facts are easy to speak about, but it is for the House of Commons to try to come together to think of some solutions.

I have two former Ministers behind me—my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton)— who have more expertise in this subject than me and who did great work. I really am glad that this subject has at long last reached the top of the political agenda. I sat on the Select Committee on Health for 10 years and although we held inquiries into abuse in institutions in which people with mental health issues were detained, we never really tackled what lay behind those issues, so I am glad that we are highlighting them today. Since 2010, Back Benchers have come together to put pressure on Governments of different persuasions to set up the Women’s Mental Health Taskforce, which was a clear indication of the Conservative party’s commitment to understand and address problems with current women’s mental health support. It was also announced at the party conference in Manchester that funding will be made available for 1,000 extra staff in community mental health services.

I congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), on her appointment, and I wish her well. However, my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Thurrock, spent two days at the Dispatch Box just before we—how can I put it delicately?—formed a new Government responding to points about mental health issues. She was a first-class Minister, and I thank her very much for her work highlighting the mental health challenges that women face. I am glad to see her here today, and I shall enjoy listening to her speech.

My hon. Friend used to be the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Mental Health, Inequalities and Suicide Prevention and was kind enough to meet me together with my constituent Kelly Swain and her team at N.O.W Is The Time For Change. Kelly works tirelessly to provide alternative therapies and wellbeing classes to people of all ages. Before my hon. Friend left office, she seemed to have a magic wand, because I find that Kelly Swain is now pushing at open doors in trying to spread her message throughout Essex, so I thank my hon. Friend for that. The all-women leadership team led by Kelly Swain works so well together, and I am glad that local organisations, along with the clinical commissioning groups, are now considering how they can integrate and support the ideas that Kelly has promoted.

Another trailblazing constituent is Carla Cressy. I look to the hon. Member for Dewsbury at this point, because she was present at a meeting with Carla and my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock. Again, it may seem strange to have a chap as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis, but it was decided that I should chair it, and I am very proud of that. I now understand the damaging effect that the condition can have on women’s mental health, and I salute my constituents. Carla’s charity is called Women with Endometriosis, which seeks to provide comprehensive mental health support to any woman facing that uphill battle, and I will continue to support her work in any way that I can.

Something that both those charities have in common, other than the brilliance of the two founders, is a commitment to pulling down barriers and removing any stigma around mental health. As the hon. Member for Bath so rightly said, it is difficult to talk about these topics, and people can be branded very unfairly. We must do something to change people’s perception of women who have mental health issues, and there are still more barriers to be brought down. I have been in this place for 36 years—some people might say that that is too long, but I still have a bit more that I want to do—and there are still issues to tackle, and my two constituents have brought the challenges home for me in very different ways. Both their organisations provide tailored support to individuals, and they are always ready to listen without judgment. That is a basic requirement for mental healthcare at any level, and it would be a great asset to our nation if we could provide that service to every person who required it.

As the hon. Member for Bath rightly pointed out, mental health issues are probably the most difficult healthcare issues to deal with. When I first became a Member of Parliament, I did not see many people with mental health issues at my surgeries, but now that is a regular occurrence. Of course, people with mental health issues need our time, but Members of Parliament are not necessarily equipped with the expertise to give advice and support; we try to signpost people in the right direction. I am sure all Members would say that, although they are very grateful for their local mental health services, we could all do better. That is where the real investment needs to be made.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I go to many schools. Mental health problems often start early, when people are teenagers, so does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important that mental health services are also provided through schools? That is where we are falling very short.

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[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I concur with every word of your comments, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the response to this debate, and the one we held yesterday on domestic abuse, has shown this Chamber in a much better light than that of a week or so ago. These are things we can agree on and that are of acute, everyday importance to our constituents.

As I have said previously, I have been in this House for 22 years and we never used to debate subjects such as this, and rarely held debates on children’s issues or many social issues. It is absolutely right that we hold such debates much more regularly these days, and they are enhanced by the personal, often emotional, harrowing and brave testimonies of hon. Members who bring such experience and richness to the debate. They show that we do have some understanding of the complex, complicated and challenging issues that face so many of our constituents every day.

I had not intended to speak in this debate, but I was moved by the contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves). I have a long-standing interest in this issue, and I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group for conception to age two—first 1001 days. That issue has growing traction and importance, and it should be mainstreamed. I also chair the charity Parent Infant Partnership, PIP UK, and co-chair the all-party group on mindfulness. If any hon. Members present have not attended a mindfulness course, I reiterate that they are available on Tuesday afternoons, usually at 5 o’clock in Committee Room 7. Given the stress of recent weeks, attendance has been noticeably higher and perhaps of more benefit than usual.

I am slightly daunted by speaking in this debate. Yesterday I said that I was daunted by speaking in the fantastic debate on domestic abuse, on the basis, first, that I am a man, and, secondly, that I am not from Wales. Today I am daunted, first because I am not a woman, and secondly because I am not from Essex, which seems to have a dominant geographical impact on the contributions that we have heard and will hear.

Next week we will celebrate Mental Health Awareness Week, and we will also relaunch the charity PIP UK. I have just written a letter to the Minister, and I very much welcome her and the huge amount of experience that she brings to her role from her health background. I am glad that perinatal mental health featured in the remarks of the hon. Members for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and for Lewisham West and Penge, because that is where I think we can have the biggest impact on the mental health of future generations.

A few years ago, the Maternal Mental Health Alliance produced a valuable piece of work that estimated that perinatal mental health issues affect at least one in six women. Too often that happens in silence, which is why it is so important that the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge recounted how it happened to her—why would it not happen to somebody just because they happen to be an MP? The cost to the nation of perinatal mental health issues was estimated at £8.1 billion every year, which is probably an underestimate. We can add to that the cost of child neglect in this country, which is estimated at £15 billion and is often born out of problems with attachment in those early years, even before the child is born, and particularly if a woman is facing huge stresses and challenges, or domestic violence and so on. The statistic that I gave yesterday, which I still find hard to believe, is that a third of domestic violence cases start during pregnancy. The cost of getting this issue wrong is more than £23 billion a year. That is so much more than the more modest investment we could make to get this issue right and prevent those problems and the huge issues they create, financially but also socially—problems that are often lifelong for future generations.

We need better attached children, and attachment dysfunction has gone under the radar for so long. It is therefore essential—I am glad that the hon. Members for Bath and for Lewisham West and Penge mentioned this—that the vital six-week checks on new babies should also include the physical and mental health of new mums, particularly first-time mums. I make no apology for repeating that health visitors have been an important component in helping with those checks, and one great achievement of the coalition Government—I was also part of the shadow health team when we worked on this—was the substantial increase in health visitors. That was based on the Kraamzorg programme in Holland, which we went to see. It showed that if we work intensively with new parents in those early stages, we can prevent many problems from happening later on. Health visitors are such a good investment to ensure happy, healthy, stable new parents who are able to interact in a sensible, robust, proper and healthy way with their children, and that is in the best interests of kids and their parents.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The health visitors in the early weeks when I was first a mother, and subsequently, were wonderful and a real lifeline. We do need to continue with that, but the problem is that it is not systematic enough. Making sure that a mandatory six-week health check is done by a GP and a health professional is the way forward. Currently, the system is too haphazard and we need to have a much more watertight system to get help to every woman who needs it.

[Tim Loughton]

We need both. The health checks are NICE-recommended, but alas not mandatorily funded or instituted across the country. Frankly, all GPs need better training on mental health and mental illness prevention generally, and especially on perinatal mental health.

It was a huge success of the coalition Government that we recruited almost the 4,200 target for health visitors that was set back in 2010. We have lost as many as 30% of those now, since the responsibility for health visitors went from the NHS to local authorities. I am not saying whether that was the right move or not, but, given the cash constraints on local authorities, health visitors have turned out to be a soft target. That is a hugely false economy and certainly needs to be revisited as a priority by the health team.

The lifelong importance of early attachment should not be underestimated. It has been judged that for a 15 or 16-year-old suffering from depression—an all too common problem among teenage children in schools—there is around a 99% likelihood that his or her mother was suffering from depression or some other form of mental illness during or soon after pregnancy. The correlation is as close as that. Not getting it right during the conception to age two period will have an impact on many children for their childhood years and, for too many, continuing into their adult years too. Maternal mental health is very important, not just for the mother herself but for her children and the surrounding family.

Let us not underestimate the impact this has on fathers as well. I will be ruled out of order if I go too much into the subject of male mental health—although I hope we have a debate on male mental health too—but the impact of poor attachment between a mother and baby has significant impacts on fathers. It is important that they are also given every help and support to have that attachment to their children. Too often, children’s centres and other support mechanisms are mum-centric and we overlook the role of the father. The father has an important role to play in the life of the child and an important support role to play in the physical and mental health of his partner, the mother.

The Government have done an awful lot in recent years to raise the profile of the importance of mental health and flag up how we need to do much more. Importantly, they are also investing much more in mental health. We talk about the parity of esteem between mental health and physical health, and we all agree that that is necessary. Much has been done to reduce the stigma that was attached to mental illness just 20 years ago. It is good that so much more money is going into the area. We have a shortage of mental health practitioners and we need to make sure that we prioritise recruiting, training and getting them in service as soon as possible.

The criticism I have is that last year’s Green Paper on mental health included a lot about school-age children, which is important, but virtually nothing on pre-school-age children and perinatal mental health. Shifting the age profile forward and making it more about prevention and early detection—rather than dealing with the symptoms of a child who may already be damaged because their mother was damaged in their early years—is the way we have to go. We have to do much more in schools, but we need to do so much more before children get to school, by working with their mothers and fathers at an early stage.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on introducing the debate and welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), to her new position.

I welcome this debate because it is another opportunity to talk about mental health. As was said earlier, at one time it would not have been spoken about, but our debates, which have in large part been cross-party and consensual, have changed people’s attitudes. That is the real difference that we have made. The hon. Members for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) were right that this is the House at its best—disagreeing politely, but ensuring that issues that frankly are not very popular are debated consensually. I welcome that. These debates have made a real difference in changing people’s attitudes to mental health. I pay tribute to the charities that have recently been involved in various campaigns, because eradicating stigma is a big issue that we still need to work on in our discussions about mental health.

The hon. Member for Bath pointed out in her introduction to the debate that one in five women can at some stage experience a common mental health issue, whether depression or anxiety. Often, they are the ones at greatest risk, especially young women. Although all the evidence suggests that men are more likely to take their own lives, there is an increasing danger among young women of taking their own lives. The statistics have not really budged since 2012, and I think the same is true for the suicide rate among women generally, which at the moment I think is 5.4 per 100,000 of the population. Those rates have remained static for the past 10 years. Some great work has been done on suicide prevention, which led to a slight drop—although I notice that the figures recently went up again—but we need to put more effort into looking in detail at the underlying reason why the suicide rate among women remains static.

The other issue is that women are more likely to suffer from mental illness because of trauma, such as domestic violence and sexual abuse, and issues around body image, which the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham spoke about and which I will come on to.

I welcome the work of the women’s mental health taskforce, which reported in 2018. Let me put on record my thanks to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) for the work she did. She was a great champion not only for women’s mental health but for the entire mental health agenda. Not only was she always available to speak to Members, but I know from speaking to charities and others working in the field that her door was always opened. She listened; she made sure she got change; and she can be proud of the work she did.

The taskforce’s report touched on something that is quite self-evident, but which we sometimes forget—namely, the clear link between poverty and socioeconomic conditions and women’s mental health. It found that 29% of women in poverty experience poor mental health. Another issue touched on, which was raised by the hon. Member for Southend West, was prisons. The report highlighted the depressing statistics for women self-harming in prison, which are obviously linked to other issues such as poverty, which has already been mentioned, and substance abuse.

I agree totally with the report’s conclusion that we need to link those issues up and take an holistic approach, but I would go one step further. I have spoken about this before, but we also need to hard-wire mental health and wellbeing into all public policy, whether nationally or locally. We need a system whereby any policy being developed should be tested against a matrix of mental health indicators before implementation, and I would include spending decisions in that. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talked about spending cuts, and although we might disagree about their effects on Sure Start centres for instance, making what the Treasury might see as easy cuts leads not only to problems locally but to more expense for the taxpayer in the long term. We should certainly look at that when we are spending money, because while the call is often for more money—which we do need in mental health—we also need to ensure that it is spent correctly and joined up. We could achieve a lot more if we took a joined-up approach.

Let me give two examples of where not having that prerequisite for testing is leading to problems and costing the taxpayer and society more. One is the Department for Work and Pensions and its employment and support allowance assessment. I am clear that people should be encouraged to work, and we all—let us be honest—know that the right type of work is good for people’s mental health. However, we should not have a system that is very blunt in terms of assessment and that takes little account of those living in our communities with long-term mental health problems.

A constituent in her late 50s came to see me a few months ago, having lived with long-term mental health issues in the community. She went for her ESA assessment and got no points. She was then virtually suicidal. I intervened, although, frankly, it should not have taken me to intervene. She then had a mandatory reconsideration, and her payment was reinstated. If we look at that woman’s history, it is clear that she is not going to work, but the process did not take that into account. If that person had then been sectioned, had gone into hospital or had—let us be blunt—taken her life, that would have been a huge cost to society.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I have been an MP for a relatively short time, and I find increasingly that trying to access services or get universal credit throws perfectly healthy people into mental health problems, because it creates anxieties and delays. I am not surprised that a lot of people are being thrown into mental health problems, because our public services are increasingly not responding in a humane way to people’s needs.

[Mr Jones]

I agree, and I will come on to the other example I have in a minute. Those problems then result in a cost to the taxpayer. If we had road-tested the ESA policy in terms of mental wellbeing and assessment when we were developing it, that would have helped the situation.

The other example, which the hon. Lady has just referred to, is universal credit, which is creating huge problems for many of my constituents. They are going up to six weeks without any money. That is having a huge effect on women’s mental health, because the main carers in most of these households are women, who have to juggle budgets. Again, we should have thought beforehand about the cost to society and the taxpayer of the added mental health problems generated through this policy.

On women in prison, it saddens me a little that the Government have now taken up the “lock them up and throw the key away” agenda in the criminal system. We need to reduce the number of people who are actually in prison, and especially women. If we look at the evidence and at the reason why women are in prison, we see that it is linked to domestic violence, mental health problems and substance abuse.

In County Durham, I pay tribute to Durham police and the crime commissioner Ron Hogg, who introduced Checkpoint in 2011. He did that because he was sick and tired of putting women shoplifters through the criminal justice system when what they really needed was help. If we look at the statistics and at the changes that the programme has made, we see that it is cutting reoffending rates. It is addressing the real issue, which, in most cases, is domestic abuse and mental health issues.

In addition, we need clear pathways. The report says we need joined-up local services. That is not just about the acute sector and GPs; it is about the voluntary sector as well, and we need to ensure that it is part of that joined-up local system. Certainly, in my experience, it is delivering local services and good value for money very effectively for local communities. In my constituency, I have a fantastic project called Just for Women, which deals with women who have faced domestic violence and mental health problems and who have been in probation. The project staff do one simple thing: they allow time, and they talk to people. They use crafts and other things to get women’s confidence back. If we sit and talk to the women in that project, we find that most of them have been through every programme possible—they have gone through systems and systems. We need to ensure that we put in place a system that works.

Finally, I want to touch on body image. I welcome this year’s report by the Mental Health Foundation, which focused on the link between body image and the nation’s mental health. In the report, one in five UK adults said they felt ashamed of their body image and 43% of women had low self-esteem when it came to their body image. That does lead to psychological effects.

I agreed with the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham when he talked about the internet companies. They have a huge responsibility in ensuring that the messages they put out do not perpetuate the myth of the perfect body image. That is leading not only to psychological problems but to people having unnecessary cosmetic surgery and interventions, which are harmful to them.

I have challenged Facebook, for example, to ask why it continues to carry adverts for Botox, which is a prescription drug. Just try to take one down; my constituent Dawn Knight, who has been campaigning on this, tried to take one down, but it cannot be done. These companies should take a proactive approach to blocking these adverts, because they are not only perpetuating the image of the perfect body, but are, in some cases, I think, actually breaking the law. If social media companies such as Facebook will not change, there needs to be legislation.

In conclusion, I welcome the debate, because we are talking again about mental health. Is this about money? Yes, it is. We do need investment in mental health services. However, we also need to ensure that we have that joined-up approach to not only services but methods and processes. That can reduce people’s mental illness and ensure not only that we have a society that is content with itself but that, when people do get into crisis, there is a service and support there for them.

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[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, everybody who has made vital contributions this afternoon and the Minister for her responses. If I could take one thing out of this afternoon it would be for the Government to take seriously my request for the Women’s Mental Health Taskforce recommendations to be put into a full strategy in order to bring everything together.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes with concern the rise in mental ill health among women, with one in five now experiencing common mental disorders and young women the most at-risk group; recognises that women’s mental health problems are often rooted in experiences of violence and abuse; believes that mental health services often fail to respond to women’s specific needs, including their experiences of trauma; calls on the Government to ensure that the gender- and trauma-informed principles of the Women’s Mental Health Taskforce are adopted by mental health services and that women’s mental health needs, including their experience of violence and abuse, are prioritised and taken seriously in all mental health policy, strategy and delivery.