Every day, across England, people are seeking help for
distressing and painful conditions with which their family doctors are unable to help and for which no specialist service is available. Many visit their GPs, hospitals and other health services many times, yet their problems remain unresolved, at a high cost to them, to their families and to the NHS.
People with medically unexplained symptoms, people with personality disorders and those with complex mental health problems frequently get‘bounced’ around the NHS, passed from one service to another, none able(or willing) to offer them the flexible, personalised and sometimes time-
consuming support they require.
A group of GPs in the City of London & Hackney decided to tackle this by setting up a new service for those with mental health problems they could not manage through existing primary care services who fell outside the scope of other local mental health services. The ground-breaking Primary Care Psychotherapy Consultation Service (PCPCS), implemented and run by the Tavistock and Portman
NHS Foundation Trust, is the result of that innovation. It offers help for a range of needs, close to home, often in people’s own GP surgeries, rather than in remote clinics. This includes a range of psychological therapies, joint consultations with GPs, and training for primary care staff to enhance their capacity to help. As this report demonstrates, it can change people’s lives and dramatically
improve their health and wellbeing
