Include mental health in care integration, says expert review

20 Sep 13
Mental health services must be incorporated in plans for closer integration between NHS and social care provision to ensure best value for money, an inquiry looking at necessary reforms has recommended

By Richard Johnstone | 23 September 2013

Mental health services must be incorporated in plans for closer integration between NHS and social care provision to ensure best value for money, an inquiry looking at necessary reforms has recommended

The Future of Mental Health Services inquiry was established by the Mental Health Foundation charity last year to examine what changes would be needed to deal with forecast growing demand for services.

Today’s final report concluded that NHS mental health services were ‘straining at the seams’. 

However, it predicted they would face ‘even greater pressures’ in the future, due to both a growing and ageing population, as well as persistently high prevalence rates of mental disorders among adults and children. Funding constraints across the health service are also likely to affect services for many years.

Dinesh Bhugra, co-chair of the inquiry advisory panel and professor of mental health and diversity at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, said these factors would ‘undoubtedly impact on future mental health services’.

There is a need for ‘fresh ways of working’ in mental health to make best use of available resources, he said.

Among the recommendations in the report was a call for ‘increased integration… between different parts of mental health services, between physical and mental health care, and between health and social care’. 

The report stated this required ‘a new approach to training health and social care staff, and a change in culture and attitudes’.

Other recommendations include greater personalisation of health services to ensure that patients, and their carers and families, are involved in decisions about care and service provision as equal partners.

The inquiry also called for mental health to be treated as a core public health issue, so that it would be as normal for everyone to look after their mental health as it is to look after their physical health. Those working in public health, including in local government, should also view mental health as one of its key responsibilities.

Much of what needs to be done ‘is simply implementing known good practice that already exists’, Bhugra added.

‘Failure to provide good, integrated mental health care is not a failure of understanding what needs to be done, it is a failure of actually implementing good practice in organisational strategies and the day to day business of providing people with the care and treatment that they want. We need to start today to rectify that.

‘We cannot expect mental health services simply to muddle along with no clear sense of what is required, and sleepwalk into the future. If we do so, we will be failing all those who in the future need mental health care and their families, as well as the staff who work in mental health services.’

Spacer

CIPFA logo

PF Jobsite logo

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top