Equality for older people

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Baroness Murphy writes for ePolitix.com ahead of her question in the House of Lords on age discrimination in mental health services.

Tens of thousands of people over the age of 65 are being denied access to specialist mental health services because of arbitrary age limits and are missing out on vital treatment and support, risking serious deterioration in their mental health.

This is despite the fact that mental ill health is commoner in older age groups, especially depression and of course dementia, which is almost entirely a disorder of the very aged.

Suicide is twice as common in people over 65 as it is in young people and at least 80 per cent of older suicides are suffering from depression. Half of younger people with depressive illnesses are referred to a specialist psychiatrist, whereas only one in six older people are.

Maintenance treatment significantly reduces the risk of relapse and mortality. Thus the discrimination makes no clinical sense, as treatment, by and large, has similar efficacy in older people as it does younger people.

Mental health services have in the past 30 years traditionally been configured by age. This means that if someone is under 65-years-old, they can receive a wide range of support through adult mental health services. But a person who is only one year older – regardless of their need – will be placed in an older people's service where this same support is not available.

For example, if someone under the age of 65 has a mental health crisis, such as an attempted suicide, they can have immediate assessment and treatment at home from a 24-hour specialist team. But people over the age of 65 cannot.

Over-65s are also denied access to a range of services available to younger adults, including psychological therapies, early intervention, rehabilitation and addiction services.

The government published the first National Dementia Strategy last year but the recent National Audit Office report on progress published two weeks ago pointed out that progress was poorly led and poorly monitored and they had little faith in the government's structures to deliver the strategy.

There appears to be no plan to ensure that older people with depression and other serious life threatening mental health disorders get the same care as their younger counterparts.

In the light of the government's new Equality Bill with its commitment to ending discrimination in public services, I shall be asking what steps the government intends to take to end this iniquitous treatment of older people.

Elaine Murphy, a crossbench peer, was professor of old age psychiatry at Guy's Hospital, University of London and is a vice president of the Alzheimer's Society