Commenting on the Royal College of General Practitioners survey showing that only 15 per cent of family doctors can usually get psychological therapy for adults who need it within two months of referral, Dr Jenny Taylor, Chair of the Society's Division of Clinical Psychology, said:

"The British Psychological Society fully endorses and actively supports Mind and Lord Layard in their campaign to ensure that, by the end of the next term of government, all people who would benefit are able to access evidence-based psychological therapies.

"The lack of parity in service delivery between access to psychological interventions and psychiatric medication is unacceptable when the evidence for the effectiveness of psychological interventions is so clear. Things are especially bad in clinical areas like child and older adult mental healthcare, where there aren't actually many effective medication based treatments (children) or where such treatments can do harm when used in the absence of psychological intervention (older adults with dementia).

"Nowhere else in healthcare is the clinical guidance provided by NICE so routinely flouted; it is time that mental health service users and carers received the full range of evidence-based treatments they rightly deserve.

"As Lord Layard rightly points out, the cost per capita is not high; the cost to society in failing to respond to need is far, far higher."

Source
British Psychological Society