Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 6 December 2016 to Question 55193, what national minimum standards exist to ensure the provision of psychological therapy in adult secondary and tertiary mental health services.

Over the next five years, NHS England will be working with partners to develop a range of evidence-based treatment pathways for mental health and the supporting infrastructure required to enable their implementation. Each of the pathways will be designed to span the journey from ‘referral to recovery’.

As outlined in Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, this will include a focus on the provision of evidence-based psychological therapies as part of secondary mental health care services.

NHS England has funded an Improving Access to Psychological Therapies – Severe Mental Illness programme to test and evaluate the impact of providing evidence-based psychological therapies for people with a severe mental illness.

For specialised mental health inpatient care, NHS England has published service specifications for the provision of high, medium and low secure mental health services and tier 4 child and adolescent mental health services which include the provision of psychological therapies and interventions as part of the treatment pathway.