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Mental Health

Volume 455: debated on Monday 8 January 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many individual patients received treatment for mental illness in each of the last 10 years; (105655)

(2) how many episodes of treatment for mentally ill patients were completed in each of the last 10 years.

Information is not available in the requested format. Information on the number of finished episodes under the care of consultants in the psychiatry group in each of the last 10 years is shown in the table.

Count of finished consultant episodes where the main specialty of the consultant was mental health (700-715) NHS hospitals, England, 1995-96 to 2004-05

Learning disability

Adult mental illness

Child and adolescent psychiatry

Forensic psychiatry

Psychotherapy

Old age psychiatry

700

710

711

712

713

715

2004-05

26,422

131,668

2,083

1,825

277

44,690

2003-04

29,954

137,449

2,068

1,868

309

45,320

2002-03

36,466

143,631

2,297

1,716

346

49,084

2001-02

34,737

148,460

2,240

1,852

230

49,159

2000-01

36,367

152,371

2,055

1,712

235

50,573

1999-2000

39,221

157,193

2,015

1,700

94

53,882

1998-99

42,165

160,610

1,960

1,673

54

51,816

1997-98

43,304

162,008

2,048

1,508

53

50,337

1996-97

45,887

165,316

2,207

1,285

63

51,731

1995-96

50,680

175,289

2,123

1,136

68

51,644

Notes:

1. Care is needed when analysing hospital episode statistics (HES) data by specialty, or by groups of specialties (such as Acute). Trusts have different ways of managing specialties and attributing codes so it is better to analyse by specific diagnoses, operations or other recorded information.

2. Finished Consultant Episode (FCE).

3. An FCE is defined as a period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one health care provider. The figures do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one episode of care within the year.

Sources:

1. Hospital Episode Statistics (HES).

2. The Information Centre for Health and Social Care.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she plans to introduce a system of payment by results for mental health services. (108619)

The Department is currently working with the national health service information centre and the NHS to develop a classification system for mental health services. The Department will provide further progress on these developments in the document “Future of Payment by Results: 2008-09 and beyond” to be published early in 2007.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans she has to fulfil the commitment in the “Our Health, Our Care, Our Say” white paper to introduce statutory regulation for psychological therapies. (109730)

The Government have long accepted that psychotherapists, counsellors and other talking therapists require statutory regulation in the interests of public protection. Once a prerequisite infrastructure is in place to provide statutory regulation, the Government intend that the Health Professions Council will regulate psychotherapists and counsellors.

The public consultation on proposals to reform the regulation of medical and non-medical healthcare professions closed on 10 November 2006. Ministers will shortly consider the future work programme on healthcare professional regulation in the light of the responses received and the Government’s own policy objectives.

Skills for Health launched an initial competence framework identifying the scope of practice involved in psychotherapy and counselling, for consultation between 1 December 2006 and 28 February 2007. This will inform the standards for statutory regulation.