Better treatment for depression on the NHS

[Shrinkhole]

There are a lot of threads about how terrible NHS mental health services are. Believe me those of us who go work in them don’t disagree. There is a lack of funding and parity with physical health services which is most of the issue.

The National Mood Disorders Network is lobbying parliament to get better treatment for people with depression including a wider range of psychotherapies, TMS and novel drugs.

If this is something that you think should happen please consider

1. signing the petition
2. writing to your MP asking them to support an Early Day Motion put forward by Tim Farron MP

https://mood-disorders.co.uk/parliament-campaign

The weblink has a link to sign the petition and a draft email that can be adapted to send to your MP

Maybe it won’t work but it’s got to be worth a try.

Thank you @Shrinkhole
I really appreciate this

Bumpity bump

Well this is depressing! 😅

If you'll pardon my humour!

It seems to be always the way in the petitions section though. I've always thought that a shame, given the traffic on other boards.

Yes I did post it on mental health too but that was even worse. Maybe should have gone with AIBU

Yes, I have just bumped it and also pulled out the petition link.

Doing so here too for anyone who is minded:

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/increase-nhs-patients-access-to-innovative-treatments-for-depression

And direct link to the draft letter to MPs that can be amended:

https://mood-disorders.co.uk/parliament-campaign-draft-email/

I will also be sharing it at my work, where I know it will be warmly recieved.

The page that you link to seems to have a different focus from your OP.

From your OP, I thought that the petition was primarily about general improvement in mental health services for depression. But actually, the petition is solely about urging govt to roll out three specific novel treatments. One of these is actually for bipolar disorder rather than depression, another is a specific anti-depressant (which I think has been assessed as not having good enough clinical results to add it to the already wide range of ADs available) and the third is TMS.

I don't disagree with the petition (I'd need to look at evidence for each of these therapies before forming a view). But people should know what they are being asked to sign up to, and the OP is unintentionally misleading.

The mood disorder network generally is trying to get better treatment for bipolar and unipolar depression and the membership definitely includes centres like Exeter that are focused on psychological therapies. I don’t think it is narrowly limited to those 3 things just that those are examples.

It is a crying shame that TMS is not available at all on the NHS when it has a great evidence base for depression, almost no side effects and offers a non drug option for people. People who are able can pay thousands of pounds privately for it. I hate to see effective stuff not being available to all.

Ketamine again people are paying thousands to get this privately. I’m not such a huge fan because of the very short term effects but I do think in combination with therapy it might be helpful and the point about it being just another antidepressant is that it has a completely novel mechanism whereas many of the ones we have currently are variations on the same monoamine based theme.

Yes I really think you are misreading the page. It’s just giving those 3 as examples of basic things we should have access to in the UK that other countries routinely do and we don’t