Brighton and Hove has 30,000 depressed patients, campaigner tells health chiefs

Health chiefs were told that 30,000 patients in Brighton and Hove are depressed.

And that many of them faced a 20-year wait for therapy unless they were suicidal.

Complementary therapist John Kapp made the claim at a meeting of the Brighton and Hove Health and Wellbeing Board this afternoon (Wednesday 11 September).

Mr Kapp asked the board to look into a voucher scheme giving people free access to mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT).

???? He said that the eight-week course of therapy had the support of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). ????

He also said that it taught people self-help techniques to help them become better at managing their emotions so they were less likely to end up in accident and emergency (A&E). This has been a particular problem in Brighton.

He said that the course was free for NHS patients but the waiting time was 20 years unless patients were suicidal.

And he urged health chiefs to reduce the waiting list by using the third sector as there were more than 20 providers in Brighton and Hove.

Mr Kapp said: “Three years ago, to reduce the waiting time, I created the Social Enterprise Complementary Therapy Company (SECTCo) whose slogan is ‘medication to meditation’ and whose mission statement is: ‘Give a man a pill and you mask his symptoms for a day. Teach him mindfulness and he can heal his life.’”

Brighton and Hove City Council was now responsible for public health, he said, and for directing the strategy of the Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

He added: “I am therefore calling on you councillors to play doctor to the CCG and cure it’s demented paralysis by banging heads together.

“Please set up a ‘chemist shop’ voucher system by which GPs (general practitioners) can prescribe the MBCT course as easily as Prozac.”

Patients who pay for the course themselves usually have to find between £150 and £370.

Councillor Rob Jarrett, chairman of the Health and Wellbeing Board, which includes councillors and local health chiefs, responded.

He said that the board recognised the role of MBCT and had recently recommissioned services.

Waiting times were reducing and recovery rates improving, he said, so the board would not be asking the CCG to make changes at this stage.