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 improve access to mental health support for people with type 1 diabetes.

The NHS Long Term Plan committed to increasing the provision of mental health support for all patients who require it. The importance of addressing the mental health needs of people with diabetes is recognised and further work is underway to consider the most effective routes for supporting this as part of the future development of services.

On 21 March 2018, NHS England and NHS Improvement, along with the National Collaboration Institute for Mental Health, published ‘The Improving Access to Psychotherapy Therapy (IAPT) Pathway for People with Long-term Physical Health Conditions and Medically Unexplained Symptoms’. The guidance outlines the IAPT pathway, and accompanying benchmarks, to support the national expansion of IAPT services for adults with long term conditions and medically unexplained symptoms.