Speaker: Professor Louis Appleby

National Director for Mental Health in England, Chair, The Mental Health Taskforce and Professor of Psychiatry, University of Manchester

• People no longer believe the good cop/bad cop routine psychology plays with psychiatry
• Psychological treatment services need to articulate their purpose more clearly
• Psychological treatment services need to put service users firmly in control of their purpose and processes

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Session report by Jan McGregor Hepburn, BPC

The keynote address by PROFESSOR LOUIS APPLEBY, National Director for Mental Health in England, and professor of psychiatry, amongst other things, set out what he thinks is needed to deliver psychological treatments:

1. Government policy, and money which is ring-fenced

2. Research evidence and patient choice/preference to inform what will be provided

3. Clinical engagement to actually do the work

4. Improved primary care treatment- 90% of metal health conditions are contained and worked with in GP practices

He said that NICE have a concept of stepped care, with an integrated service (presumably from one step to the next), but will only prescribe treatments which have evidence to show patient benefit, which commissioners will require. CBT is in the ascendancy because they have good research evidence; if other modalities produce the evidence, they will be included. As to the question of long term therapies, and experienced practitioners, he said, “It would be a perverse consequence of this new initiative in mental health if good psychological therapies are lost.”