Annual review 2007/08

Recovery and social inclusion

Shaping better therapy

Making a difference

Rethink believes people have a right to the treatment that best suits their needs. So we’ve continued to work for psychological therapies to become more accessible. 

Making it happen

• We worked with other mental health charities such as the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, Mental Health Foundation, Mind and Young Minds, to put together a body of evidence on how effective psychological therapies could be.
  
  
• Together we launched the report ‘We Need to Talk’.
  
  
• We gained support from organisations outside the mental health sector, including Help the Aged, Alcohol Concern and Diabetes UK.
  
  
• We asked the Government to:
  
  
  1. Make the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines a reality.
  2. Increase the number of people who get psychological therapies by training more therapists.
  3. Introduce proper regulation for therapists.
  4. Support more research into a broad range of psychological therapies, not just Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). 
     
     
• We formed a partnership with The University of York, who have a reputation for clinical expertise in this area, to design and jointly deliver primary care psychological therapy services.  This is the first time Rethink has ever run a psychological therapy service.
  
  
• Rethink signed the New Savoy Declaration in November – a statement of recognition of what the Government has done, and also a call for sustained investment to deliver increased access and choice for everyone able to benefit from psychological therapies.

Making an impact

• The Government extended the scope and range of its ‘Improving Access to Psychological Therapies’ (IAPT) programme beyond the two demonstration sites in Doncaster and Newham, adding 11 Pathfinder sites.
  
  
• The first of these Pathfinder services was in Stoke-on-Trent, and Rethink in partnership with The University of York was awarded this landmark contract. It will provide evidence-based interventions for about 4,000 patients every year who’ll receive individually appropriate support including guided self-help and cognitive behavioural therapy for depression, anxiety and other common mental health problems. 
  
  
• The Government announced £173 million to fund the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme through the Comprehensive Spending Review. The review also said that NICE guidelines for severe mental illness needed better implementation.

Moving forward

• We’ll work with The University of York, primary health care teams, and other agencies in Stoke-on-Trent to deliver a high quality, evidence-based, primary care psychological therapy service. We’ll talk to people about the outcomes experienced and collect evidence. We’ll also look at new service delivery opportunities to improve people’s lives.

• We’ll work with our We Need to Talk partners to deliver local campaigns so that Trusts really put Government guidelines into action. And we’ll try to influence professional standards and push for more research on a range of psychological therapies. 
  
  
• We also plan to publish the results of our ‘Your Treatment, Your Choice’ surveys and press the National Institute for Clinical Excellence to continue to include psychological therapies in the new NICE guidelines due in 2009. We want to support local campaigners to make these a reality for the people with severe mental illness who need psychological therapies but don’t always get them.

Moving you forward
Want to campaign with us for even better access to psychological therapies? Go to www.rethink.org/campaignwithus and sign up.