Terminal Illness: Mental Health Support

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) for securing this debate and for speaking so movingly and emotively.

I can only imagine the mixture of emotion someone feels when they receive a terminal diagnosis. We know that around six in 10 people referred for hospice care have significant psychological support needs, but there is a lack of good, standardised mental health provision for people receiving hospice care. More than 10% of suicides in the UK are in some way linked to either chronic or terminal physical illnesses, so there is a mental health undercurrent running through the heart of end-of-life care.

Like many other Members, I want to pay tribute to the extraordinary hospices in my constituency. I have visited them and taken part in local fundraising events for them. I did 12 hours of exercise for Winchester hospice —I was doing boxing around midnight, and I can still feel it now, even though it was about a week ago. The inspiration I got from seeing so many members of the community raising money for Winchester hospice, or for children’s hospices Naomi House and Jacksplace, is unbelievable; so is the dedication of the staff and the volunteers, working in some of the most emotive jobs possible. It is a lifeline for the families affected by having a relative or a child with a terminal illness.

Hospices across the UK are under immense strain, and only 16% of people attending them believe that their psychological support is adequate. Too many people approaching the end of life are pushed towards the overstretched NHS mental health services. If someone ends up on the conventional mental health path, they may be put on a waiting list that is more than a year long—and, I am sorry to say, they may not have that long to live. We must also recognise the quiet heroism of unpaid carers. They give up work, rest and any sense of normality to care for someone they love, and most of them receive no formal bereavement support at all. Their contribution is vast, but their support is minimal.

As an aside, since many Members here have an interest in hospice and medical care, and a couple are doctors, one of the best books I have read on the subject is Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal”. It is about the wishes of people who receive terminal diagnoses, how they want to die, the experiences they want to have while they are on that journey, and the amount of fulfilling experiences and the sense of purpose that they can have while suffering from sometimes incredibly painful diseases.

As the Government develop the new modern service framework for palliative and end-of-life care, we want to ensure that mental health is absolutely at its core. That means regular mental health assessments throughout a person’s illness, embedding psychological support in palliative care teams and creating a sustainable, long-term funding model for hospices so that they can plan with certainty. It also means real support for family carers, paid carer’s leave, guaranteed respite and proper access to bereavement services.

This debate is not about dying badly; it is about helping people to live really well and to live really fulfilled until the end. If we truly believe that every life has worth, that worth does not diminish in someone’s final months or days, so mental health support must be built into palliative care, and not bolted on as an afterthought.