Written question asked by Baroness Howells of St Davids (Labour), in the House of Lords. It was answered by Lord Warner (Labour) on Monday, 10 July 2006.

Mental Health: Stress

Question: What steps they intend to take to implement the seven-year plan aimed at increasing the number of counsellors available to support individuals who suffer from stress, as recommended in the report by the London School of Economics mental health group, The Depression Report: A New Deal for Depression and Anxiety Disorders.

Answer: We agree that stepped improvements in access to evidence-based psychological therapies should be available. Our programme, Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT), which we announced in May, is a key part of the Government's mental health programme to address this. The IAPT programme will define the best way to achieve these improvements over the next five to 10 years. We have recently set up psychological therapy demonstration sites in Doncaster and Newham, to help test the extent to which increasing access to these therapies improves well-being, reduces worklessness and the number of people claiming incapacity benefit, and provides greater choices in treatment and core options for people with these conditions. The demonstration sites will help to clarify the number of staff, the skills set and the training requirements needed to improve access to psychological therapies. Evidence from the demonstration sites will be supplemented by a national network of smaller, local IAPT projects and 20 national primary care mental health collaborative sites.

Secondary information