Mental Health Services: Children and Adolescents

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The transition from CAMHS is now one of the mandatory national indicators in what is called the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation scheme which provides incentives for performance, so I can reassure the noble Baroness on that. She is also quite right to highlight the issue of severity. That is why, under the plans that we have set out for CAMHS, by 2021 the service will be able to see 70,000 additional children per year for evidence-based treatment.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the chairman of Forward-ME and a patron of the Young ME Sufferers Trust. Many young people with ME are believed to have a mental illness, and despite what the noble Lord said two weeks ago and what other Ministers have said—that ME is not a mental condition—how do we persuade professionals that these children would probably be much better off if they were left to allow their bodies to heal themselves rather than having cognitive behaviour therapy and graded exercise imposed upon them?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I know that the noble Countess feels passionately about this issue, but she will know that it is only right for me to say that we need to be guided by evidence that is collected in clinical reviews. A review is being carried out by NICE at the moment and we shall wait to see the results of that before deciding what needs to happen as a consequence in terms of the kinds of treatments that are appropriate for those suffering from ME.