Lib Dems Back Whole-Person Mental Health
Lib Dem Conference today passed policy on Whole-Person Mental Health.
The motion “Whole-Person Mental Health: Care, Choice, Community, and Combatting Populism” referenced the party's new Mental Health Policy Paper.
Its approach is based on six key principles:
- Accessibility.
- Fairness and equity.
- Personal choice and autonomy.
- Being community-centred.
- Being led by evidence.
- Caring for the people that take care of us.
The motion as a whole is below, while the policy paper background to the motion is here.
1 Conference recognises that:
2 A. Decades of Liberal Democrat campaigning have pushed
3 Britain's mental health services forward and positively shaped
4 how we as a nation think about mental health.
5 B. There is a danger that the dismissive language of the far right
6 has begun to undo the progress we made by reintroducing
7 stigma and shame into conversations about mental health.
8 C. Labour's recent record is particularly alarming, and their
9 decision to scrap mental health targets reflects a dangerous
10 retreat from treating mental health as a distinct and urgent
11 policy area.
12 D. The pandemic has transformed both the scale and visibility of
13 the crisis, and that it amplified loneliness, anxiety, and grief,
14 and pushed NHS, local authority and school staff harder than
15 ever before.
16 Conference believes that:
17 i) Anyone can experience mental illness, through no fault of their
18 own, so everyone must be able to access timely diagnosis,
19 treatment and ongoing support.
20 ii) Resources in our mental health services too often only kick in
21 at the point of crisis.
22 iii) An individual's mental health journey is deeply personal, so
23 their treatment programme should be too.
24 iv) Families and communities play a crucial role in the lives of
25 people with mental illness, either as a source of resilience or
26 stress. They also bear a lot of the burden of supporting them
27 and helping them make sense of decisions on offer.
28 v) Liberal Democrat policies are based on scientific evidence and
29 lived experience, especially in a time of rising scepticism
30 towards mental health and of new and developing treatments.
31 vi) A healthier NHS workforce would have more time and capacity
32 to diagnose and treat mental illness.
33 vii) Services should be designed in a way that means anyone who
34 needs them can access them, irrespective of age, class, gender,
35 income, ethnicity, or postcode.
36 Conference therefore endorses policy paper 163, Whole-Person
37 Mental Health: Care, Choice, Community, and Combatting Populism,
38 with its approach based on six key principles:
39 I. Accessibility.
40 II. Fairness and equity.
41 III. Personal choice and autonomy.
42 IV. Being community-centred.
43 V. Being led by evidence.
44 VI. Caring for the people that take care of us.
45 In particular, Conference welcomes its proposals to:
46 1. Ensure that as few people as possible develop mental ill-health
47 by:
48 a) Offering regular mental health check-ups for people, and
49 those supporting them, when they are most vulnerable to
50 mental ill-health.
51 b) Ensuring that all mental health services are integrated with
52 money advice, substance abuse, housing and employment
53 advice services by default, and widening access to services
54 that provide temporary protection from problem debt.
55 c) Introducing structural reforms to both the National
56 Curriculum and Ofcom to empower children and parents to
57 use social media in a way that is right for their family, whilst
58 being protected from the risk of mental harm.
59 d) Requiring social media apps to introduce cigarette-style
60 health warnings for under-18s.
61 e) Tripling the budget of the Farmer Welfare Fund, which
62 would provide greater mental health support and services
63 at livestock markets and county shows, and offering
64 additional mental health support following Rural Payment
65 Agency visits.
66 f) Restoring the 2 bus fare cap, and supporting local
67 authorities to use powers to franchise services and simplify
68 funding so that affordable bus routes can be restored or
69 new routes added where there is local need, to reduce rural
70 isolation and loneliness.
71 2. Make it easier to access mental health services, and quicker to
72 receive a diagnosis and treatment, by:
73 a) Supporting digital-enabled therapies, if there is enough
74 evidence for them, and if patients retain the choice to opt
75 for more traditional treatments.
76 b) Making it easier for world-class experts to do essential
77 mental health research in the UK, and for them to conduct
78 crucial research that helps build our evidence base.
79 c) Opening a walk-in Young People's Mental Health Hub in
80 every community, with specific support for children that
81 have fallen between school and CAMHS support.
82 d) Removing the arbitrary cliff edge at 18 for young people's
83 mental health services.
84 e) Enshrining the 'no wrong door' principle into law across
85 mental health and related services, to ensure that no one
86 will be turned away or told to start again elsewhere.
87 f) Making mental health referral and support services
88 available following every miscarriage, not just after three,
89 and introducing annual reporting on waiting times for
90 these patients.
91 3. Prevent people with mental illnesses, and those around them,
92 from shouldering the unfair mental and financial costs
93 associated with mental illness by:
94 a) Making prescriptions for people with chronic mental health
95 conditions free on the NHS.
96 b) Introducing a legal duty on health professionals to identify
97 family members and unpaid carers, and to consider their
98 own health and support needs as part of routine care.
99 c) Preventing insurers from discriminating against people with
100 mental health conditions when the risk is unrelated, by
101 requiring fairer underwriting and oversight from the
102 Financial Conduct Authority.
103 4. Reform the Mental Health Act to protect individual liberties and
104 ensure that mental health professionals have the support they
105 need to deliver appropriate care by:
106 a) Creating a statutory, independent Mental Health
107 Commissioner to represent patients, their families and
108 carers, and introduce a new Veterans' Mental Health
109 Oversight Officer.
110 b) Working with healthcare regulators to provide additional,
111 appropriate safeguards on the use of digital monitoring
112 technologies, where needed.
113 c) Ensuring that all police forces have a mental health
114 professional in the control room at all times.
115 d) Implement the recommendations of the Wessely Review
116 appropriately to ensure that people of black African or
117 Caribbean heritage are no longer more likely to be detained
118 under the Mental Health Act than white people.