Mental Health Care project
Healthwatch England now plan to focus on mental health to develop an evidence base which policy makers and professionals can use to identify, and deliver, the improvements in support that matter most to people.
Healthwatch England have now produced a report "What people have told us about mental health".
The report aims to look at:
- what mental health support people want, from childhood to old age, focusing on the key moments in life when people need support.
- Examine how people from different sections of the community experience life with a mental health condition to highlight any inequalities in mental health support.
- Identify solutions, where we can, which do not treat mental health in isolation, and which seek to address the broader needs individuals may have.
Their ultimate aim is "to make sure future mental health reforms focus on measuring the outcomes most important to people and to continually use people’s feedback to improve support".
Healthwatch England listed their key findings as
We know that when mental health professionals act on what people say, this can lead to improvements in both services and the support that specific groups receive.
Since January 2016, over 34,000 people have shared their views and experiences of using mental health services with us.
Local Healthwatch have also produced 229 reports highlighting what people like and what could be better about mental health services.
This report sets out what we know about people’s experiences of accessing mental health services and the wider support available.
In contrast to other areas of health and social care, most of the feedback we receive about mental health care is negative.
Common issues people report include:
- Struggling to find information about the support available
- Mental and physical health needs being treated in isolation
- Not always getting the same level of service
- Waiting too long to access mental health services and receive a diagnosis
- Non mental health professionals not always having the information and training they need
- Not feeling listened to or involved in decisions that affect them.
When it comes to specific services, people most commonly talk to us about the support provided by GPs, community services, crisis care and children and young people’s services.
It is clear that not everyone has the support they need to manage their mental health conditions. For those that do, the quality and consistency of support is not always enough and does not always meet people’s needs.
Mental health policy is currently focused on addressing many of these issues. However, if changes to services are to be effective we believe more needs to be done to understand different people’s experiences of mental health care, at different stages in their lives.
Our work on mental health will now focus on developing an evidence base which policy makers and professionals can use to identify, and deliver, the improvements in support that matter most to people.
