In our role as part of the We Need to Talk coalition, we work to improve access to psychological therapy treatments on the NHS.
We know that long waiting times can exacerbate mental health problems and lessen the effectiveness of the therapy once the wait is over, so we want the NHS to commit to keeping waiting times for talking therapies to no more than 28 days.
Recently, the We Need to Talk Coalition put together a response to the Government's publication ‘A consultation on strengthening the NHS Constitution’ (PDF).
The coalition's response to the government’s consultation focuses on psychological therapies and insists that mental and physical illness be approached with equal weight.
We believe that there is still work to do before the NHS commitment to treat mental health on a par with physical health is realised, and the constitution does not yet go far enough to recognise this aim.
Our response asks for three changes:
• To create equivalence between physical and mental health in entitlement to treatments recommended by NICE
• To establish a pledge for a 28 day standard maximum waiting time for psychological therapies
• To ensure that patient involvement, specifically ‘No decision about me without me’ is embedded in the mental healthcare pathway.
The revision to the Constitution is an important opportunity to embed the principle of equitable access, choice and waiting times for psychological therapies and other mental health treatments.
Psychological therapies are assessed as part of NICE’s clinical guidelines, not their technology appraisals, but at present the NHS constitution favours mental health treatments that have been assessed through technology appraisals, so talking therapies lose out.
We are calling on the Government to include a pledge in the NHS Constitution that the treatment of mental health is valued equally to that of physical health. In order to do this, they must specify that this right also applies to evidence-based psychological therapies.
The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme is improving access to mental health services, but in many areas waiting times are in excess of 28 days, and choice of therapy continues to be limited to CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).
We believe that all NHS-funded psychological therapy should be accessible, including couples therapy, brief dynamic therapy, counselling, and interpersonal therapy. At present, the full range of therapy variants is only available in a few areas, but it is very important that people are made aware of the full variety of their options in order to ensure that they receive the type of therapy that suits them best.
We call on the government to include in the NHS Constitution a pledge to clarify everyone’s entitlement to making an informed choice about their psychological therapy interventions.