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Mindfulness

Oral Answers to Questions — Health – in the House of Commons at 11:30 am on 27 November 2012.

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Photo of Chris Ruane Chris Ruane Opposition Whip (Commons) 11:30, 27 November 2012

What recent assessment he has made of the treatment of repeat episode depression by (a) drugs and (b) mindfulness-based Intervention.

Photo of Norman Lamb Norman Lamb The Minister of State, Department of Health

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has evaluated and recommended the use of mindfulness-based therapies as a psychological Intervention for the prevention of relapse, within its guideline, “Depression: the treatment and management of depression in adults”. Drug treatment is also useful in the management of enduring depression.

Photo of Chris Ruane Chris Ruane Opposition Whip (Commons)

The number of prescriptions issued for anti-depressants has gone from 9 million to 46 million in the past 10 years. NICE has recommended mindfulness as a better treatment than drug therapy for repeat episode depression, but it has not been taken up by the NHS. Will the Minister meet a delegation of MPs and mindfulness experts from across the UK to discuss how mindfulness can play its full role in helping the NHS and people with mental health problems?

Photo of Norman Lamb Norman Lamb The Minister of State, Department of Health

I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s work on promoting the case for psychological therapies, including mindfulness, and would be happy to meet him and a delegation of experts. The Government have massively increased psychological therapies—nearly 1 million people in the past two years accessed psychological therapies through the improving access to psychological therapies programme. We are totally committed to improving access to psychological therapies to cure the imbalance in access to services for people with mental health problems that has existed for a very long time.

K

Although I think it is excellent that there has been such a huge focus on the IAPT initiative as a Speech & Language Therapist I am concerned about the large numbers of people with mental health problems and coexisting communication problems who find these verbally mediated approaches difficult to access (this is not just those with a Learning Disability or...

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intervention

An intervention is when the MP making a speech is interrupted by another MP and asked to 'give way' to allow the other MP to intervene on the speech to ask a question or comment on what has just been said.

Minister

Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.