To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of mental health provision for the elderly.
Answered on
15 April 2019
The NHS Long Term Plan, published on 7 January 2019, commits the National Health Service to improving the provision of mental health support for older people with a range of needs and diagnoses, including common mental health problems and severe mental illnesses. This improvement applies across all mental and physical health services and settings, including Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT), community, crisis and liaison mental health care as well as new models of integrated care for older people living with frailty. The National Implementation Framework, to be published later this spring, will provide further information on how the Long Term Plan will drive improvements in older people’s mental health care.
The Department and NHS England remains committed to increasing older people’s access to psychological therapies via the IAPT programme. Data shows that once older people access psychological therapy in IAPT they achieve positive outcomes. The recovery rate for those people aged 65 and over who access treatment has increased from 57.8% in 2014/15 to 64.9% in 2017/18.