Meeting of the Parliament 06 January 2015
I welcome the minister to his post, and I also welcome the many developments that have taken place in mental health since 1999. There has been a great deal of continuity in this area between one Administration and the next. However, it is right in debates such as this one that we highlight the problems that exist, particularly when those problems have been brought to us by constituents.
I have two examples that I want to discuss today. The first concerns a woman who came to see me quite recently. She was anxious and met the criteria for referral for psychological therapy—as was confirmed recently by an NHS helpline—and yet her GP did not refer her. I wonder how common that is.
The SAMH briefing for this debate states that
“two-fifths of GPs ... had not referred anyone for psychological therapies ... because waiting times are too long.”
It quotes one GP who says:
“Access to psychological therapies is extremely poor with long and unacceptable wait times. GPs feel under pressure not to refer people to already stretched services”.
I am very concerned by that research and by my constituent’s experience. Although four health boards out of 14 met the 18-week target for access to psychological therapies, the situation may well be worse because there is unmet need as a result of non-referral. There is definitely a big challenge in that respect.
Of course, other factors may be involved. I am a great fan of GPs, including Dr Simpson, and I am a special fan of my own GP. However, we must be realistic and accept that some GPs are probably not as knowledgeable about mental health as they should be. Some members have said that there should be more on mental health as part of GPs’ training, and I note that the recent shape of training review group report, “Securing the future of excellent patient care”, recommends an expansion of GP training, presumably post degree, to include more mental health placements. The briefing from the Royal College of Psychiatrists for today’s debate states that it supports the recommendation.
The SAMH research on GPs is also interesting. Its briefing states that
“90%”
of GPs
“said they wanted more information on local social prescribing opportunities”
and that almost 50 per cent were
“not aware of ... SIGN guidelines on non-pharmaceutical treatments for depression.”
There is, realistically, room for some work in that area.
If members want to find out more about the issue, they should come to the SAMH reception next Thursday, which I am sponsoring and which is on mental health and primary care, so the timing is excellent.
There are many good examples of mental health care and primary care in the community more generally. Richard Simpson referred to the link workers in the deep end practices—let us see a bit more of that. There are great nursing projects, which I will be highlighting in my members’ business debate tomorrow, and many of them have a mental health focus. There are also community projects, which I am sure members have in their constituencies. For example, in my constituency there is the Pilton Community Health Project, which runs its women supporting women project as well as providing counselling services and doing other work, a lot of which is to do with mental health.
My second example is an even more distressing one, because it involves a woman whose son committed suicide when, she feels, there was no help or services available for him. The woman, Laura Nolan, has set up the Joshua Nolan foundation and has done amazing work in the past year to raise money for counselling for those who cannot get services through the NHS. Of course, that should not be necessary, but we should pay tribute to her for all the work that she has done. She is now starting to work on awareness of mental health issues in schools, which is part of the very important public mental health agenda, which includes the work of the see me campaign. We have to work on that as well.