Posted: Friday 15 October 2010
After months of work, we’ve finally completed our investigation into the provision of psychological therapies in England. We’ve led this work as a member of the We Need to Talk coalition, a body of organisations all campaigning to improve the provision of talking therapies.
We’ve made some interesting findings.
Since the introduction of the last Government’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies in 2007, there have been some real improvements. Many people are having to wait no longer than a few weeks and are actually being offered some meaningful choice in the type of therapy they receive. However, for many others the situation is not so good. One in five are having to wait over a year between being referred for therapy and actually receiving it, while 68 per cent had absolutely no choice in the therapy they received.
Needless to say, the consequences of the inadequacies of this provision can be pretty devastating for those involved. Furthermore, the consequences of having to wait for so long and having absolutely no choice can really undermine the effectiveness of the therapy that is eventually used. For example, we found that people who had to wait less than three months were almost five times more likely to say that the therapy helped them get back in to work than those who had to wait between one to two years.
There’s also a pretty convincing economic case for more to be done. Poor mental health costs the English economy over £100 billion a year, so a small increase in spending on talking therapies could return huge savings elsewhere.
So what happens next? Well, we want to work with the Government to make sure that we get the type of therapy provision that people need – access for all to a wide range of therapies within 28 days of referral. To be fair to the Government, they’ve been saying some pretty good things. They've made a commitment to improve access to talking therapies in its programme for Government, and have since made choice a key part of its planned reforms for the NHS.
What our report does is highlight the current problems, and makes the case for action to be taken. You can be sure that we, together with our coalition allies, will be fighting tooth and nail to make sure that the Government makes good its promises and implements the recommendations we’ve made.
There will be many opportunities for you all to get involved in the near future to help us achieve our aim, so watch this space!
Colin Walker, Policy and Campaigns Manager
http://psychminded.co.uk/news/news2010/October10/Mental-health-groups-praise-government001.html
According this Mind supports everything the government is doing.
Waiting times is not the only issue - its the lack of intensity of the therapies once offered, or patients may be passed around the different services eg computerised CBT, low impact therapist four sessions, self help, high impact therapist for six more sessions, waiting to be stepped up next (or not). This fits the model rather than what people look for at a time of acute distress.
To keep IAPT going past year three I worry that commissioners will then divert the scarce funds from services for those with severe mental health problems in community mental health teams - in order to offer therapy to everyone in primary care, but to do that in a way that is very low intensity, such as six sessions of groups CBT based. Noone benefits unless this is based on what people need rather than what gets paid for by the NHS, hoping that the government may see it as a priority but perhaps then with strings (eg getting people back into work).
I saw on another site how the future visions coalition had praised the government's work so far. Yet how can any of us feel optimistic given the clear signs of what is to come, eg welfare reforms so that benefits will be there for a lesser number of people for less time, stressful retesting, no excemptions? People wont have time to actually recover when they are subject to this.
The spending review next week is making many of us feel more distressed and scared - and IAPT cannot be of much help there.
I could only think of things improving once longer term therapies - eg over six months, for those who are let down by the mental health system in other ways, eg diagnosed with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.
6 sessions of anything doesn't scratch the surface of most difficulties, my god they would have to be pretty trivial to be solved in 6 sessions. This is the death of therapuetic work which takes time, a lot of time, and doesn't neccessarily have to be a specific model. Then iatrogenic damage, that's left out of the equation, how many number of sessions would that be allocated? None. Good point 'still concerned', people saddled with PD diagnoses get a really bad deal because it's not viewed as an 'illness', and long term support is said to induce 'dependency' [funny how institutionlisation/dependency] doesn't get applied to any other diagnosis.
6 sessions is not going help people deal with welfare problems and cuts to services will mean only certain diagnoses and dire crises will get anything, and even that time limited
I had this same problem when I felt unbelievably depressed.I went to the GP and he just tried to prescribe me with medication with no opportunity to receive talking therapies. Fortunately I declined. I was on a waiting list to see a counsellor and a girl friend of mine told me she got online help from a charity called Keep Smilin'. I went on there site www.keepsmilin.co.uk and they helped me massively. They provide online support and you make a post and a volunteer gets back to you witihn 24 hours - I used the service for 3 months! Really helpful. Recommend it for anyone who was as desperate as I was.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/dec/04/jobless-therapy-talking-cbt-unemployment
Well they were prepared to use CBT on us at job centres only last year. What happened to that?
Welfare reform has its roots around CBT.
It may help some but the impact of CBT is being used for political purposes in my view.
You only have to look at the origins of this type of treatment where
all the blame is put on the individual especially concerning failure to be employed.
.Paul
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