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Mental health: high priority but low funding

If mental health fails to get parity with the rest of the NHS the government’s plans for better services will have to be substantially scaled back, a survey warns.

England got growth money for mental health of just 1.6 per cent this year after pay and prices weare taken into account, according to the report by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

This compares with 9.9 per cent before pay and prices and five per cent growth money for the NHS as a whole.

Mental health is one of the government’s top three priorities for health and social care and its aim is to deliver a world class service by 2010.

But the Sainsbury Centre survey said mental health budgets were being squeezed by staff shortages, rising prescription bills and the need to pay off inherited debt. Mental health services also often struggle for money in competition with other services, it said, reflecting pressures to deliver waiting time and other acute sector targets.

Many of the Sainsbury Centre’s concerns were echoed in a new study by the King’s Fund into mental health services in London. The 18-month inquiry found slow progress in service development matched by evidence that much of the additional funding is not finding its way to the frontline.

It said that while expenditure in the NHS as a whole increased by 28 per cent from 1997, spending on mental health services in London increased by only half as much over the same period. The capital remains reliant on admitting people to hospital rather than keeping them in the community and service users said wards have become frightening places.

Recommendations for action include developing a London-wide mental health plan focusing on community health care and specialist housing and improved conditions on hospital wards.