Four quick observations on the publication of Closing the Gap: Priorities for essential change in mental health (pdf).
1. It’s good to see it published and it’ll be a useful document to refer to.
2. The significant changes needed will come about only through an alliance of everybody affected by the mental health system, from both the top down and the bottom up. The target audiences explicitly identified in the document miss one half of this equation by not including people with mental health problems, their (representative) organisations or families/carers.
3. As @shaunlintern over at HSJ highlighted, the focus on parity in mental health is a sham when NHS England and Monitor have cut the 2014/15 tariff price for mental health (and community) services by a fifth more than the reduction proposed for acute providers
4. The signatories to the policy are Nick Clegg and Norman Lamb. No Jeremy Hunt, in his role as Secretary of State for Health, or (perhaps more noteworthily) as a Conservative. Are the Lib Dems looking to claim mental health as their own ahead of 2015?
arbitrary constant 
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