Barry Sheerman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Barry Sheerman on 2016-05-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he has plans to encourage mental health providers to use social technology as a part of therapeutic treatments for young people.

Alistair Burt

Future in Mind suggests there is a need to incentivise self-care by designing mental health apps targeted at children and young people to strengthen resilience, support and individual capacity for self-care.

This has been achieved by establishing a children and young people’s category within the new NHS England Innovation fund for mental health to develop apps for cognitive behavioural therapy and self-harm and suicide prevention, amongst others. In conjunction with this work we are also assessing the potential need for quality assurance controls for mental health apps.

The Department is currently considering providing access to both high quality and reliable information and support online through a national branded portal established on NHS Choices.