For episode 53 of the National Health Executive podcast, we were joined by the Centre for Mental Health’s CEO, Andy Bell, to speak about the government’s approach to mental health and care, reforming the Mental Health Act, and how the short, medium and long-term future of the NHS looks.
Speaking on some of the NHS’s future plans and goals, Andy highlighted the importance of people being willing to change. The current service model is not going to be suitable forever, he added, in fact it does not even suit the population now – at least for certain groups of people.
“That does have to shift and co-design is one way of doing that and indeed co-production of care,” he said. “We’ve seen many examples of the some of the most exciting ways of providing mental health support over the last few years have been developed within communities.”
This includes charities, user-led organisations etc.
On the government, Andy said: “They have demonstrated a commitment to equality for mental health – they’ve talked about the importance of that promise that was made a number of years ago now of parity of esteem.
“We know for many people that promise feels pretty distant and indeed frankly hypocritical when we’ve been told it for such a long time.”
Listen to the full podcast above and hear Andy’s thoughts on all things mental health.
