Mental health
Our goal is to ensure that everyone living in Lincolnshire has the best possible health and wellbeing. Supporting those with mental health issues is a key part of our focus.
We want people of all ages who experience mental health problems, have learning disabilities and/or autism to live healthy and fulfilling lives, and to be accepted and supported by the communities they live in.
One in four adults and one in 10 children experience mental illness, and many more of us know and care for people who do.
Along with our acute and community services providers, we have a mental health provider – NHS Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LPFT). Established in June 2002 and authorised as a foundation trust in October 2007, LPFT is focused on helping people towards recovery, enabling them to live well in their community as much as possible, working closely with local communities to design and improve its services.
LPFT’s services in Lincolnshire include:
- Talking therapies for mild to moderate common mental health issues such as anxiety or depression, provided by LPFT’s Talking Therapies service.
- Community services for people of all ages who are recovering from severe or long-term mental illness.
- Crisis resolution and home treatment for when someone becomes unwell and needs support, in order to prevent them requiring hospital admission.
- Mental health inpatient care for people experiencing a severe, short-term episode of mental illness.
- Mental health rehabilitation supporting people with severe or long-term mental health problems who require support in returning to the community to live independently.
- More specialist services, including learning disabilities support and some social care, for adults, children, families and older people.
- Specialist psychological therapies.
You can read more about LPFT’s services on its website Information about our services across Lincolnshire.
What are our priorities and what do we want to achieve?
Increasingly the work undertaken by LPFT is community based and it provides people with a wide variety of services as outlined above, in addition to working closely with local councils, GPs, charitable and voluntary organisations, service users, and carers and their representatives.
Nationally and in Lincolnshire, mental health is continuing to undergo a significant transformation to meet the needs of our communities and the wider health and care system. Much has changed in the four years since the pandemic, including how LPFT delivers its services to the people of Lincolnshire.
Mental health services for children and young people
One of the most striking changes has been in demand for mental health services, which has increased but also changed in nature. Particularly evident is demand from our children and young people, evidencing a real need to focus on early intervention.
In Lincolnshire great strides have been made including introducing new mental health services in schools and offering an all access telephone line, and work to review the services provided for children, young people and their families continues.
Making services better for people with a learning disability and or autism
Of equal importance is making mental health and case services better so that more people with a learning disability, autism or both are able to live in the community, thanks to having the right support, close to home.
Mental health and dementia services
Our older people are crucially important to us too. Demand for mental health and dementia services in this group continues to rise yearly in line with Lincolnshire’s ageing population – currently the county has around 180,000 people aged 65+ and this is forecast to increase to 250,000 by 2041.
Celebrating our achievements
Despite challenging circumstances, especially in terms of demand for its services, there is much to celebrate with LPFT making a number of notable achievements:
- It has introduced some fantastic new services and support, including more mental health support in schools
- A new virtual autism hub has been launched
- There is now a Macmillan cancer support service for those struggling with their cancer diagnosis
- There are new mental health roles in primary care and children and young people workers in hospitals and emergency departments
- RECONNECT has been introduced to provide enhanced care after custody for adults struggling to make the transition from prison back into the community