Mr Matt Hancock has just announced on BBC Radio 4 that ‘our (mental health) services are better than almost any other services in the world’. But how can he possibly know this – there has never been an independent assessment of the Government funded Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Service (IAPT), the latter have only ever marked their own homework. The Secretary of State might ask the National Audit Office why it has never published the results of its’ investigation into IAPT. My own study published in the Journal of Health Psychology in February of this year
https://www.dropbox.com/s/flvxtq2jyhmn6i1/IAPT%20The%20Need%20for%20Radical%20Reform.pdf?dl=0
suggests the recovery rate in Adult Services is just 15% far short of the Government target and IAPT’s claim of a 50% recovery.
Dr Mike Scott
2 replies on “Deluded Secretary of State for Health and Social Care”
Deluded suggests that they don’t know what they are doing. I would suggest that all those at the top of policy making and management know very well that the statistics produced about IAPT are rubbish but they all carry on living the lie so that they can claim to all those not in the know of how these stats are produced that they are running a well funded and effective service.
Since the NAO started and dropped its investigation the massaging of stats has grown and grown. Even the “IAPT Manual” encourages services to have a data manager. These data managers then have a vested interest to make the stats look good so that they keep their jobs, bad data = service tendered out to another provider.
Look closely at the stats and you will see ever diminishing reporting of anxiety disorder specific questionnaires (so recovery only based on the basic GAD and PHQ), a reclassifying of people who do not recover as non IAPT (so you will see less people in the stats finishing therapy than starting it), and of course nothing done about the fact that “entering treatment” gets classified as happening at triage because a few bits of information are given out to the patient, while the real waiting lists are not reported on.
IAPT goes from bad to worse, over 10 years so many clinicians who cared have been driven out, or retired or given up the fight as they fear loss of income. There is a large IAPT management class growing of those who came up through the PWP, then high intensity route without any real core profession training. They have a narrow experience of therapy and life. They believe that what they are doing is right and that staff who complain or burnout are just not suited to the great project that is IAPT.
Tam, it is truly desperate and it seems impossible to get an airing in the media, or with politicians concerned to push matters. It also needs to be addressed in BABCP and the British Psychological Society but I’ve so far failed to make headway with them. Any ideas welcome.
Mike