Mental health tsar wants staff to be more positive about the service

Professionals working in mental health services need a more positive stance when describing the services they provide, England’s national director for mental health, Louis Appleby, has said.

“In trying to bring about improvements you cannot present an image of a backwater,” he said. “You can’t talk about this pejoratively and then expect people to come forward for services.”

Professor Appleby, speaking at a seminar in London on Thursday 17 July organised by the Westminster Health Forum, was discussing developments in mental health services since the implementation of the national service framework for mental health in 1999.

His comments were an indirect reference to press reports a few weeks earlier in which the incoming president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Dinesh Bhugra, told the Observer newspaper that he wouldn’t want any of …