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Contact the National Director for Mental Health

  • Last modified date:
    28 August 2008
photograph of Professor Louis Appleby

Louis Appleby is the National Director for Mental Health. You can contact Louis  with your views on mental illnesses and mental health services by post or email (see contact details at the bottom of this page).

A message from Louis Appleby:

The last eight years have seen unprecedented progress in mental health services. During this period, I have visited many excellent and innovative services and met numerous service users and frontline staff. I have seen, and heard, for myself the ways in which the lives of people with mental health problems have changed for the better.

Among the many areas of progress are:

  • the expansion of community care - we now have almost 750 new specialist mental health teams providing appropriate and timely crisis care in people’s homes, effective support for those experiencing a first episode of psychosis and an assertive outreach service for those with persistent mental health problems who may not always access services in the usual way;
  • new drug treatments  - recent developments have  resulted in new treatments which have fewer side effects;
  • suicide prevention –  suicide rates in England are now the lowest on record;
  • improvements to inpatient ward environments – in many parts of the country wards that were previously impoverished, both physically and therapeutically, have now been rebuilt or refurbished.

Ahead of us lies the opportunity to build on all these achievements, maintaining the momentum for improvements and ensuring all areas of the country have the services they need. 

The next phase of reform will reflect the themes emerging from Lord Darzi’s report – the Next Stage Review – with its emphasis on prevention, patient empowerment and quality. It will bring together key areas of policy, increasingly addressing the mental well being of communities as a whole and extending the progress made to date across all age groups and to more marginal ones such as offenders. Broader NHS priorities will also help shape our services, with themes such as health inequalities, the value of carers and dignity in care all contributing to an ever-improving service.

I am very interested in what you think about mental health services, so do tell me what has improved and what you think still needs to be done.

Best wishes

Louis Appleby
National Director for Mental Health

Contact Louis Appleby, the National Director for Mental Health, with your views on mental well being and mental health services at:

And to find out more or what’s new in mental health visit:

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