A think-tank has called for the government to end the exclusion of mental health services from policies to boost choice through personal budgets for users.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says increased choice could make services more responsive and empower users.
It calls for people with mental health problems to be given "personal recovery budgets" covering social care, psychological therapies and other services, as well as choice over providers.
It also says GPs should no longer be the only gatekeepers to mental health services, with nurses, counsellors and community workers also given this power.
The report says the government's focus on choice in health and social care has ignored mental health, with just 207 of 17,300 direct payment recipients in 2003-4 having a mental health problem.
But personal recovery budgets would be accessible to more users by going beyond direct payments to cover services traditionally accessed through the NHS.
The report is the third in a series of papers to come out of a
project involving mental health charity Rethink.
The charity's chief executive, Cliff Prior, said: "Personal
recovery budgets will need to be delivered as part of a choice
revolution in mental health which sees it fully integrated into the
health reform agenda, so people can access services that best suit
them at a time and place of their choosing."
Later this year the IPPR and Rethink will publish a paper summarising their plans for mental health services.
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Substance misuse
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Details of government consultations
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Private Member Bills
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Government Legislation
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