Diabetes: Mental Health Services

(asked on 6th June 2019) - View Source

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 ensure each hospital diabetes team includes a mental health professional.


Answered by
Seema Kennedy Portrait
Seema Kennedy
This question was answered on 11th June 2019

It is for individual clinical commissioning groups to commission treatment and services for people with diabetes and they are best placed to identify what is needed in their local areas.

On 21 March 2018 NHS England and NHS Improvement along with the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health published ‘The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) Pathway for People with Long-term Physical Health Conditions and Medically Unexplained Symptoms’ which is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/improving-access-to-psychological-therapies-long-term-conditions-pathway.pdf

IAPT services provide evidence based treatments for people with anxiety and depression and the services are co-located in existing primary and secondary care physical health pathways. IAPT services will target the needs of people with depression and anxiety disorders who also have long term conditions such as diabetes.

In addition, a project working group has been established involving NHS England, Diabetes UK and other stakeholders which aims to develop a care pathway which, when adopted locally, would help improve access to emotional and psychological support for people with diabetes.

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