Department of Health and Social Care written question – answered at on 17 September 2018.
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord O'Shaughnessy on 23 July (HL9378), what steps they intend to take to address the under-diagnosis of maternal mental illness and, in particular, to ensure that those suffering from post-natal depression are diagnosed and able to access treatment.
This Government is committed to improving perinatal mental health services for women during pregnancy and in the first postnatal year, so that women are able to access the right care at the right time and close to home. The Department is investing £365 million from 2015/16 to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services and NHS England is leading a transformation programme to ensure that, by 2020/21, at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period.
A key aim of this transformation programme is to take a preventative approach wherever possible, including: earlier diagnosis and intervention; support for recovery; and reducing avoidable harm.
To drive forward change, NHS England is also investing in multidisciplinary perinatal mental health clinical networks across the country, which includes general practitioners as part of the networks. These clinical networks focus on collaborative working to develop local, integrated pathways and to support early identification of those at risk of mental illness in the perinatal period, to enable better outcomes for women in all communities.
Looking ahead, we are continuing to work with the National Health Service to develop a 10 year plan for the future of the health service, underpinned by a five-year funding offer which will see the NHS budget grow by over £20 billion a year in real terms by 2023-24. The NHS will work closely with Government to produce the plan, which will set out how the money will be used to deliver our vision for the health service and to ensure every penny is well spent.
The plan will be published later this year. Better access to mental health services is one of the priorities to help achieve the Government’s commitment for parity of esteem between mental and physical health. This will be a significant step forward towards improving, and continuing to deliver, high-quality mental health support services.
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