Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health calls on government to prioritise promoting mental health over treating illness

The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health has called on the government to produce a commissioning strategy on promoting good mental health, including the skills required to deliver it.

In its response to the consultation on the Department of Health’s Commissioning Framework for Health and Wellbeing,  which ended yesterday, the charity said the document represented “a missed opportunity” to produce a more radical framework.

It said the absence of  “clear definitions of wellbeing or of positive mental health” would weaken the commissioning of services aimed at achieving these outcomes.

SCMH head of policy Linda Seymour said: “The commissioning framework presents a positive vision of public services working together for health and wellbeing. But it is short on the detail of how to achieve its goals.

“Mental health commissioning is still dominated by services to treat mental illness. It is rare that commissioners work together to build services to promote mental wellbeing or to address the wider needs of people with either severe or common mental health problems.”

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