No Health Without Mental Health

This morning Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow launched the government's new strategy No Health Without Mental Health. You can watch Paul explain the strategy in the video above.

No Health Without Mental Health will see an extra £400m put into mental services, with particular emphasis into helping service veterans and children.

It is legitimate to count this announcement as a Liberal Democrat achievement in government, as mental health was the subject of one of Nick Clegg's first speeches as leader. There is, however, widespread agreement on the way forward: Nick was even praised in a blog post by Alastair Campbell today.

This announcement was of particular interest to me because I spent part of the day emailing my employers' response to journalists. You can find it in this news story on our website.

It was certainly pleasing to see the emphasis on psychological or "talking" therapies, like cognitive behavioural therapy, in the new strategy. There is considerable evidence that they are more effective than traditional medical approaches to mental illness and they certainly do less harm - see this Daily Mail story (which began life with another of my press releases).