£170m plan to train more therapists
According to an article in the Guardian, the Government has released details of its £170m plan to train 3,600 more psychological therapists in response to the study questioning the use of anti-depressants. According to the Department of Health, about 900,000 more people will be treated for depression and anxiety under the plan, and an estimated 450,000 of these will be cured.
Mental Health Groups accept that doctors have had little choice other than to prescribe anti-depressants due to the shortage of therapists. Alison Cobb, from Mind, said “Nine out of 10 GPs say they’ve been forced to dish out drugs because they don’t have proper access to ‘talking treatments’ such as cognitive behavioural therapy”. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) recommends that talking therapies should be tried before drugs are prescribed, but with the shortage of therapists, this is difficult.
June 1st, 2008 at 10:07 pm
How typically paradoxical! At a time when MORE talk therapies are needed, the government are about to up the training requirements! From 2010 ALL counsellors will have to register with HPC in order to practise.
This registration will require a minimum qualification of Level 5 equivalent ~ ie not the Diploma now seen as practitioner level.
What happened to the initiative that ALL GP surgeries should have counsellors attached? When was that stepped down to “access to counselling services”?