Mental health and PIP

I am concerned. I am really concerned.

In my PIP medical report it stated that I receive no mental health support so therefore don't qualify for having any recognisable mental health problem. What the ATOS assessor actually meant by that is that I don't qualify for any NHS mental health support.

I am a frequent reader of many forums and this theme seems to be appearing again and again. The ATOS assessors are justifying their reasoning using the fact that people are not accessing NHS mental health services, even if they have done previously and are now under the care of the GP.

I only need to do a quick google search to find  these articles and headlines:

There can be little doubt that the mental health sector is under pressure, however understanding the nature of those pressures has been difficult.
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/mental-health-under-pressure

More than one in ten (12%) people with mental health problems are stuck on waiting lists for over a year before receiving talking treatments and over half (54%) wait over three months, reveals a new report launched by the We Need to Talk coalition of which the mental health charity Mind is part of.
http://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/people-with-mental-health-problems-still-waiting-over-a-year-for-talking-treatments/#.Vz7TjRMrLnA

The mental health service in England is in crisis and unsafe, says one of the country's leading psychiatrists.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24537304

This leads me to the conclusion that in order to be able to access NHS mental health services you need to be considered seriously unwell  before they will even consider you for treatment, and even then that treatment will be severely limited by funding. All of this is well known to "service users" like myself. It is damn near impossible to get NHS help, which is why for me personally I used my Disability Living Allowance to pay for private treatment.

I now want to highlight the sort of treatment that is available on the NHS, usually for people whose mental health is deemed "mild" or moderate" (but considering how stretched the service is, the definitions are also stretching to include some people who would traditionally be classed as severe).
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is the NHS talking therapy of choice. It is relatively cheap and relatively effective. It can be delivered in a variety of different ways, depending on the client group (and sometimes geographic location).
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Cognitive-behavioural-therapy/Pages/Introduction.aspx
I want to highlight a  few sentences from this page here:

"The course of treatment will usually last for between 5 and 20 sessions, with each session lasting 30-60 minutes."

"CBT cannot remove your problems, but it can help you deal with them in a more positive way."

It is not a cure, and it is a short term therapy. It relies on the person being in a position to be able to engage with the suggestions and to practice them daily and apply them daily. It doesn't (unfortunately) mean a nice quick fix and the person is sorted, it is trying to teach people how to live differently. There are problems with CBT, there is a good post here to read about its limitations here: 
https://everydayproblemsolving.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/cbt-from-an-everyday-perspective-part-ii/

but I am not going to into details, everything has its limitations. That, in this post is a side issue.

The main issue coming from these two points is this: NHS mental health services are limited, and any therapy you can usually get from the NHS is CBT based, which is short term therapy, around 6-20 sessions.

Going back to the ATOS assessment, why are they assuming that anyone who doesn't access NHS mental health services is not mentally ill, when the NHS is so stretched that if and when people can get treatment it is only short term therapy, not designed to cure a persons mental ill health?

People with mental health problems are increasingly looked after by their GP, even those with severe problems. People are looking to private treatment because there is very little on the NHS. People are not lying or saying their condition is worse than it "appears on paper". It is the very simple fact that the help is not there for them to access.

I feel like people with mental health problems are being punished twice over. The NHS for failing to care for them and from ATOS and the DWP for failing to take this into consideration for benefits assessments.