An NHS trust hosted a conference in Brighton today looking at ways to improve mental health care.
Hundreds of mental health professionals attended the conference at the Amex Stadium in Falmer where partnership working was one of the key themes of the day.
They were joined by patients, carers and people working in other public and voluntary sector organisations.
The conference was organised by the Sussex Partnership – the local NHS foundation trust for mental health care.
Trust chief executive Colm Donaghy said: “The context for the event is the recently published independent taskforce report led by Mind’s chief executive Paul Farmer.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to work with patients, families and partners about transforming mental health care and bringing it more closely together with physical health care.
“Another important piece of context is Sir Stephen Bubb’s recent report on services for people with learning disabilities and/or autism, which has placed a much-needed focus on this vulnerable client group.”
The Independent Mental Health Taskforce report gave “a frank assessment of the state of current mental health care across the NHS, highlighting that one in four people will experience a mental health problem in their lifetime and the cost of mental ill health to the economy, NHS and society is £105 billion a year”, NHS England said.
Responding to the report, NHS England said: “In a wide-ranging package of recommendations, it proposes a three-pronged approach to improving care through prevention, the expansion of mental health care such as seven-day access in a crisis and integrated physical and mental health care.”
Among the report’s recommendations were
- The creation of prevention plans in every community across England to help integrate public health, social care and housing and improve mental health outcomes.
- A significant increase in public transparency through changes in how spend on NHS mental health care is tracked and reported so it is clear what is being spent in communities on which mental health conditions.
- An independent system for scrutinising the quality of investigations into all deaths within inpatient mental health settings.
At the conference today (Wednesday 4 May) one of the speakers, clinical psychologist Nick Lake said that what patients tell us is that they want their mind and body to be treated together.
Dr Lake, a clinical and service director at Sussex Partnership, said that traditionally we had focused more on physical health rather than mental health.
But the placebo effect in many drugs trials demonstrated the power of the mind.
Other speakers addressed issues such as mental health support for children and young people, helping the homeless and working with the police when staff are attacked.
Sussex Partnership chief executive emphasised the goal of bringing physical and mental health care more closely together for the benefit of patients.
