Jim Shannon – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2015-10-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that young people exposed to unhealthily-thin models through advertisements are not subject to health problems relating to body image.

Alistair Burt

We want women, men, girls and boys to be confident and comfortable with their bodies and that means educating people and promoting a healthy, active lifestyle.

The Government recognises that poor body image is a common problem not only for young people but, according to the findings of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image, more than half of the population. It is a factor in eating disorders and other mental health problems.

The Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (CYP IAPT) programme is already being expanded to cover additional areas of clinical practice, and extended so that by 2018 children and young people across all of England will have access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services which have been transformed by CYP IAPT and are providing evidence based psychotherapies coupled with session by session outcome monitoring. Additionally we are investing in community services for eating disorders in order for young people to receive more effective help faster and closer to home.

The Government has also worked with the Personal Social Health & Economic Association to produce guidance for teaching about body image using quality-assured resources, and with the National Citizen Service to produce resources on body image for young people aged 16-17 to develop their own active citizenship projects on this topic.