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Birmingham Healthy Minds: Why is psychological therapy important?

Birmingham Healthy Minds (BHM) is a new primary care mental health service that is IAPT compliant and delivered in partnership with GPs, the mental health consortium and third sector organisations. This service provides psychological therapy for adults at the earliest opportunity.

Psychological therapies are widely recognised as effective treatments for a wide range of mental health problems. Access to the right therapy at the right time can have an enormous impact on a person’s life; it can help people to better manage their condition and, in many cases, enable a full recovery.

 

Birmingham Healthy Minds

The current situation: What are the issues?

Referrals 

In the first six months of the new service, from April 1, 2011 to September 30, 2011, BHM received more than 9,000 referrals, yet the service has been commissioned and only has capacity to receive and deal with 12,000 referrals a year. This extra workload is having huge impact on the following:

Waiting times

  • Our waiting time target of referral to appointment is set to two weeks, however due to the high volume of referrals this is taking between six to eight weeks.

  • Around one in three patients are waiting just under six months to receive treatment.

 

 Treatment

  • BHM have a number of people who are waiting for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) at step 3 and we are trying to address this by offering extra therapy slots. We will also be offering group therapy for depression and anxiety.

  • We currently provide a range of treatments and interventions, which is helping people.

  • We are over performing on the number of people we are seeing and moving people to recovery.

 

Patient feedback

  • Most people are pleased with their outcomes and therapists, but many patients are not happy with the waiting times.

 

The way forward

It is clear that while the provision of psychological therapies has improved greatly in Birmingham over the past few years with the Improving Access Psychological Therapy (IAPT) programme. However, with recent cuts and financial constraints, there is a demand and capacity issue. We have some way to go if we are to ensure that all those in need are able to get the right therapy at the right time.

We understand that some GPs and patients are dissatisfied with the waiting times to access BHM and we can understand the frustration this may cause. If you have any ideas or suggestions to enable us to further improve the service, we would be happy to receive them.

For more information please contact: Kully Ingram, Birmingham Healthy Minds partnership manager on kulwinder.ingram@bsmhft.nhs.uk  or call 07985 882 429.

Alternatively email Terry Downes, service manager, on terence.downes@bsmhft.nhs.uk

We have revised our new service leaflet which will be available end of November.

BHM switches to one service number – 0121 301 2525 - from December 1, 2011.