Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-11-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will respond to the Cabinet Office funded report relating to early deaths among people with mental health problems.

Alistair Burt

We know that people with severe mental illness can die 15-20 years earlier than the general population and that for too long this particular health inequality has had insufficient attention paid to it. We have committed NHS England through the NHS Mandate to take action to reduce premature death for people with mental illness. We are also investing more than ever before in mental health services, we have put into legislation that mental health should have equal priority to physical health and we are improving access to services by implementing the first ever waiting times for mental health services.

We will consider the findings of the report and respond in due course.