Below follows the GMWS’s reply to the Chief Minister’s Budget Address:

The GMWS notes with great interest the following comment which the Chief Minister made in his budget speech ‘ It is high time that we stopped differentiating between mental and physical health..’ This was in reference to the relocation of the Community Mental Health facility which for a long time has not been fit for purpose. The GMWS welcomes the integration of this facility into the broader GHA physical infrastructure but believes that it will take a lot more than this to put mental health on an equal footing with physical health provision.

At the moment we have the situation where service users suffering from physical health problems have a wide range of specialisms within the GHA itself. If it is considered necessary to access some other expertise, patients will be transported to an appropriate facility in Spain or the UK. When it comes to mental health conditions, however, service users have to make do with the small pool of professionals available here. Very rarely, access to facilities abroad will be provided but this does not happen on a regular basis at all. The fact that there are still very long waiting lists to access therapy only makes the matter worse although we hope to see the benefits of an ongoing restructuring in the not too distant future. However, even when waiting lists are considerably shortened, the GMWS believes that mental health provision needs to be much more flexible and needs to include access to a wider range of expertise, including from abroad if necessary.

People with serious mental health illnesses die 10 to 15 years earlier than the general population. The majority of excess deaths among those with severe mental health illness is physical and the majority of these deaths are due to preventable causes, another reason why mental and physical health provision needs to be on a par. A closely coordinated, holistic health approach within the GHA would ensure that the patient gets the help they need, regardless of the pathology. It would therefore make sense to have representation for mental health on the GHA executive team.

Gibraltar needs service users of mental health provision, and those who support them, to feel that the GHA can provide them with easy access to the help they need, particularly in moments of crisis. This is still not happening, according to recent complaints we have received.

 Unfortunately, a system that has been seriously failing for a long time, through lack of protocols and coordination, cannot be set right in a short space of time, even when the intention to do so is there. It is imperative therefore that the effort to achieve accessible, flexible pathways that meet the needs of the service users continues for as long as necessary.  It is also imperative for the required financial investment to be made in servicing mental health pathologies so that there is truly no differentiation between mental and physical health, as the CM himself has rightly said.