Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department takes to ensure that patients receiving cancer care also have access to necessary mental health counselling.

There is no specific pathway for cancer patients with mental health issues. Many cancer patients will complete their primary treatment and return, more or less, to the same level of health and wellbeing that they enjoyed before their diagnosis. However, we now know a significant proportion will experience a wide range of distressing problems, including psychological and social consequences. Thanks to recent research, and the views and experiences of patients, our understanding of the consequences of cancer treatment and their impact has improved dramatically.

The Macmillan Cancer Support document ‘Throwing light on the consequences of cancer and its treatment’ highlights this well. This increase in understanding led to the management of psychosocial issues and other consequences of treatment being a major priority of the National Cancer Survivorship Initiative (NCSI).

In March 2013, NCSI published ‘Living with and beyond cancer: Taking Actions to Improve Outcomes’. This document informs the direction of survivorship work in England to 2015 and is intended to support commissioners, providers and others to take the actions necessary to drive improved survivorship outcomes. It sets out what we have learnt about survivorship, including people’s needs, their experience of care, and the impact cancer and treatment has upon their lives. It describes interventions that have been tested, and are already spreading across England to improve survivors’ outcomes.

Finally, we have enshrined in law the equal importance of mental health, alongside physical health. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 sets out the equal status of mental and physical health. As such, the Mandate to NHS England makes it clear that everyone should have timely access to the mental health services that they need.

Over the course of the current spending review, we are investing in excess of £400 million to give hundreds of thousands of people access to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence-approved psychological therapies. We are also increasing the availability of services to cover children and young people and exploring extending services to people with long-term physical health problems and those with severe mental illness.