Marriage counselling to be made available on NHS
November 23, 2009
As of next April marriage counselling will be made available on the NHS. The plans are to be announced later in the week by Health Secretary Andy Burnham. The move is to me made as part of the government’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme which encourages patients to talk to professionals about their depression and anxieties so that they are in a better position to get back to work and stop claiming sickness benefits.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has recommended that therapy for couples be offered under the IAPT programme. However the idea has proved less than popular with some members of the medical profession.
Recently Nice made the decision to reject proposals for new treatments for people suffering from dementia as well as drugs that could extend the lives of cancer patients. Vice president of the Patient’s Association, Michael Summers has said that he cannot believe that the government has decided to use much needed funds by offering couples marriage guidance when there are people suffering from cancer and dementia being denied drugs that could help them and still waiting for urgent treatment.
Professor of clinical oncology at the Cancer Research UK Institute for Cancer Studies, Nick James echoes the sentiment. He said that in his opinion people suffering from cancer should be higher up the treatment spectrum than those having a few difficulties with their marriage. He went on to point out that decisions like this should be open to public debate and that he wasn’t really sure if it was the business of the state to sort out a couple’s marriage problems anyway.
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