Mental Health Reform 2025 – Where Are We Now? 

The inception of the External Affairs team at SIG in 2023 coincided with an important event in the timeline for Mental Health Act Reforms in the UK. At the beginning of the year, a Joint Parliamentary Committee had published its report on the Draft Mental Health Bill 2022, following pre-legislative scrutiny. 

The report highlighted that stronger measures were needed to address the extreme disparities and rising rates in the use of the Mental Health Act to detain those of racialised minorities, and people with learning disabilities and autism. These alarming trends were foundational to reforms of the Act because patient rights and autonomy were key themes in the informing The Wessely Review (2018). 

Whilst the previous government was reviewing the committee’s recommendations, our team sought to platform the lived experience of our residents and participants who have faced the consequences of the institutionalised approach to detention and containment of people managing their mental health.  

The looming general election of 2024 gave us an opportunity to connect residents and participants with those whose duty it is to represent their needs and ambitions. We hosted many of our local MPs in our services so that they could understand the vital importance of legislating equity into the Mental Health Act. 

Our residents and participants (R&Ps) collaborated with the External Affairs team, sharing insights with their local MPs on how the outdated Mental Health Act 1983 is applied in practice, shaping statutory services into narrow provisions of controlled containment.  

Many R&P experiences followed a similar pattern. Once admitted, they were captive with decisions made and medications administered to them with little choice or responsive assessment.    

Imploring MPs to ensure Mental Health Act reforms were pledged as part of their party’s manifesto, we have pushed for progressive mental health services, informed by best practice all over the world. Citing models proven to facilitate recovery with a person-centred focus, such as the Trieste model endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), we advocated for an inclusive shift to be facilitated through the Mental Health Act. 

We were relieved and excited to find the reform of the Mental Health Act feature in Labour’s election manifesto; a commitment that had looked unlikely at the start of the year. This reflected the approach to mental health regulations our residents put forward to the party’s MPs with clarity, detail and passion; acknowledging bias, stigma and discrimination and counter these through formal processes facilitating choice, advocacy and autonomy. 

Where Are We Now? 

The Mental Health Bill 2025 is currently passing through the House of Commons. Whilst it emphasises community mental health services as key to supporting patients, and limits detention under section 3 for people with learning disabilities and autism, it relies on integration with wider public systems to enable and uphold reform. 

Housing, education, and access to work are indeed crucial to embedding psychosocial support in community settings. These are vital to recovery and sustained wellbeing for us all. Conversely, negative impact on mental health is clearly correlated with poor housing and a lack of access to necessities that facilitate safety, independence and self-efficiency.     

It is a surprise, then, to see the government’s approach as set out in their pivotal 10-Year Health Plan is to prioritise centralisation rather than integration. Budgets and strategic decisions are being brought in-house, upskilling, motivating and expanding the statutory workforce prioritised (in a press release in June 2025, the government states their data shows 6,700 of their target 8,500 extra mental health workers had been recruited).    

Whilst we wholeheartedly support better trained mental health workers with manageable caseloads, we know that to deliver person-centred support, the statutory mental health workforce will need to be able to recommend appropriate housing, holistic support and services, life skills courses, educational development and access to work.  

This can only be facilitated with well-invested, data-connected, collaborative partnering with statutory and VCFSE services across systems and into neighbourhoods. This is what External Affairs will seek to influence as the Mental Health Bill 2025 progresses, because fully shifting care into the community and easing the point of access for marginalised groups needs a person-centred approach rooted in local communities.  

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