Are we losing our small mental health services?
By William Smith
As health provision is restructured in the face if cuts, there are fears that small, voluntary mental health 
services are the casualties – so writes Mary O’Hara in the Guardian.
This report goes on to explain the plight of Camden Psychotherapy Unit (CPU) which is worrying to all users of small mental health services throughout the country.
CPU is a situated amid a row of shops in a very ordinary and rather small building. It provides long-term psychotherapy for residents of Camden in north London. It is a small community-based voluntary mental health service.
Most of the patients would not be able to afford the kind of treatment offered by CPU as the majority are either on low incomes or benefits. Around 80 patients are treated in a year, many of whom self-refer because the long waiting lists for therapy in the statutory sector are impeding their recovery.
Many of the patients seen at the CPU would find the ‘institutionalised’ environment of hospitals very intimidating.
Ora Dresner, who has been at the CPU for almost 20 years says that the service, which is now threatened with closure, plugs a gap in statutory provision.
According to the Guardian report the CPU costs £7,000 a month to run which represents just £33 per counselling session. Last autumn it learned that, due to changes in local commissioning of psychological services, its funding from Camden primary care trust would be withdrawn from the end of this month.
Since that time local CPs, senior psychiatrists and former patients have tried to save this valuable centre but due to cuts and reorganisation of provision of therapies, some voluntary organisations no longer fit into the new commissioning criteria.
A consultant psychiatrist, Robin Anderson, says the threatened loss of small services need to have a spotlight shone on them because they are often innovative linchpins in an otherwise inflexible, monolithic system.
‘Commissioning is an issue. There are massive cuts across the health service. It’s a tough time and the weak go against the wall. You get to a point where (an organisation) doesn’t fit into the structure.’ Mr. Anderson said.
The president of the British Psychoanalytic Society, David Bell, says that services like the CPU are a crucial part of the broader fabric of services and that when they disappear an already overstretched mental health system is put under even more pressure.
It is hoped that the CPU can stretch its resources to allow it to remain open for another year whilst it tries to raise funds from alternative sources.
Dresner says ‘If we close, a choice will have been taken away from people who really need it. It would be a tragedy.’
What a tragedy this would be for Camden and what a ‘shame’ it would be to see this example repeated across the UK.
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