23 June 2006
A senior backbench MP has cast doubt on the private and voluntary sector's ability to deliver the improved access to mental health services demanded by leading academics this week.
Terry Rooney, chair of the Commons work and pensions select committee, also urged Chancellor Gordon Brown to allocate more cash in his 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review to combat rising rates of depression.
'I don't care what headline the funding falls under – NHS or Department for Work and Pensions spending – the money simply must be found,' he told Public Finance.
Rooney's comments followed a June 19 report by Lord Richard Layard, a government adviser on welfare reform and mental health, which concluded that 'psychological therapy should be made available to all people suffering from depression, chronic anxiety and schizophrenia'.
He estimates that one in six people are affected by mental health problems.
Layard's study, published by the London School of Economics, says that extensive therapy services, including an expansion of cognitive behaviour therapy, should be available nationally by 2013.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has already approved wider use of the therapy in its guidance. It could, Layard argued, help to halve depression rates and reduce the economic cost of mental health problems.
As well as offering a vital treatment, CBT is also crucial to the government's welfare reform plans. Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton this year published a green paper outlining plans to reduce incapacity benefit claimants by one million to cut welfare costs and boost employment.
Over 40% of the UK's 2.6 million IB claimants have mental health problems. But a national shortage of NHS therapists is preventing many from receiving proven and cost-effective treatment. Layard reported that CBT waiting times in many parts of the UK have reached 18 months, and called for an additional 10,000 therapists.
Consequently, Hutton's green paper proposals include plans to use private and voluntary sector partners to deliver treatments.
Rooney said that some pilot schemes, for example at Derby NHS Trust, have done so effectively.
'But I'd be surprised if there is the capacity across the private and voluntary sectors nationally,' Rooney told PF.
'If that's the case, we must ask whether the NHS should redirect funds towards CBT or… pump in cash to and from private and voluntary groups.'
A DWP spokeswoman said that Hutton would 'firm up' plans to expand psychotherapy access in a forthcoming white paper.
PFjun2006
