Commons ‘ignoring mental health’
Mental health issues are very rarely raised in Parliament, according to new research from the UK Council for Psychotherapy.
An analysis of oral health questions by MPs since March 2012 shows that of 584 questions put to health ministers, only 18 focused on mental health conditions, 3% of the total.
With questions about specific health conditions, 90% were on physical health and 10% on mental health.
Last year a new law was passed giving mental and physical health equal importance.
David Pink, chief executive of
UKCP, said:
"There are a few MPs that have gone out of their way to raise the profile of mental health in this country.
“We must praise and encourage the work of people like Paul Burstow, Jack Straw, Charles Walker and others. But this research reveals that they remain a small minority.
"Our emotional and psychological wellbeing is too important to remain on the sidelines. It touches every family in the country and it needs to become everybody's business, inside parliament and out."
Paul Burstow MP, former government minister for mental health, writing exclusively in UKCP's summer edition of The Psychotherapist, said:
"The interdependence of mental and physical health should mean that we are pushing on an open door.
"But somehow the NHS default remains stubbornly biased towards physical health.
"It is a terrible false economy at the expense of people's lives - as well as the public purse."
