Mental Health Services: Waiting Lists
(asked on 15th January 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to engage with accredited (a) counsellors and (b) psychotherapists to reduce waiting times for mental health services.
Answered by
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
To deliver the mental health commitments in the NHS Long Term Plan and help reduce waiting times, our aim is to grow the mental health workforce nationally by an additional 27,000 professionals by March 2024.
Accredited counsellors and psychotherapists constitute a significant proportion of the NHS Talking Therapies workforce. A collaborative campaign to encourage accredited counsellors and psychotherapists to apply to work in NHS Talking Therapies services has been developed by NHS England with several of the counselling and psychotherapy professional bodies. These professionals are a vital part of our mental health workforce and are fully integrated within it, delivering National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended psychological therapies for depression.