(Overcoming) attacks on thinking: the importance of psychoanalytic thinking in surviving systemic fragmentation of the public mental health sector

Abstract

In the last 15 years, the public mental health sector has been subject to two big policy shifts that have impacted the ability of Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) and Specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) clinics to deliver therapeutic services. This paper discusses the impact of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) policy and the Health and Social Care Act (2012) on these services and the various barriers to effective treatment that they have created. The author then proposes that, as psychoanalytic psychotherapists, with our particular awareness of unconscious and group processes, we are well-placed to support multidisciplinary colleagues in overcoming feelings of hopelessness, anxiety and impotence that these policy shifts create and takes inspiration from potentially analogous situations with patients as a method to approaching the systemic aspects of our work.