Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to meet the psychological needs of people with (a) inflammatory bowel disease and (b) other long-term health conditions.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease is the collective name used to describe ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. To support commissioners and clinicians to deliver evidence based local services for people with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published the best practice guidance, ‘Crohn’s Disease Management in Adults, Children and Young People’, in October 2012 (updated in 2016), and, ‘Ulcerative Colitis Management in Adults, Children and Young People’, in June 2013. Commissioners should have regard to NICE guidance when planning services for local populations.

The NICE Crohn’s clinical guideline states that “Inducing and maintaining remission as well as optimising nutritional status and growth, and minimising psychological concerns and possible side effects of treatment are fundamental to best practice for all people with Crohn's disease, whatever their age.” This could include access to psychological support if appropriate. The NICE Ulcerative Colitis clinical guideline states that “Access to psychologists and counsellors is important for a range of problems and people with ulcerative colitis may benefit from their input at various stages of the disease.” Psychological support is highlighted as being particularly important if a patient is considering surgery for their disease, and post-operatively, when surgery has taken place. Again, the guideline is clear that psychological support can play a part in patient care, if appropriate. Both sets of guidance can be found at the following links:

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg166

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg152

Where appropriate and in line with the best available evidence, NICE has also made recommendations on psychological support for other long term conditions in its clinical guidelines. The full range of published guidance can be found at the following link:

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/conditions-and-diseases

Finally, as set out in ‘Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health’, published in July 2016, the expansion of psychological therapies services will require building skills and capacity in the workforce. This includes top-up training in new competencies for long-term conditions and medically unexplained symptoms for current staff, targeted training in working with older people, and training new staff to increase overall capacity – such as the 3,000 additional mental health therapists located in primary care.