Rule Breaker

One in four people experience mental health problems, but according to a new report from an NHS England taskforce, 75 percent of people receive no help.

Just £9.2 billion a year is spent on mental health services -- less than a tenth of the overall NHS budget. Campaigners say the situation is deteriorating; mental health trusts saw a real-terms fall in budgets of more than 8 percent between 2010 and 2015, the BBC reported last year, with a group of professionals describing the cuts as "profoundly disturbing".


In a separate Freedom of Information finding, the BBC said 2015 budgets fell 2 percent when adjusted for inflation in the financial year to April 2015.

That pressure appears to be having an impact; around 75 percent of people receive "no help" for their mental health problems, the NHS England report said, with "hundreds of thousands" patients' lives "put on hold or ruined" and links to "thousands of tragic and unnecessary deaths".

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The study urges that the NHS should try to "achieve the ambition of parity of esteem between mental and physical health" by reforming attitudes, practices and funding. "The NHS needs a far more proactive and preventative approach to reduce the long term impact for people experiencing mental health problems and for their families, and to reduce costs for the NHS and emergency services," said Paul Farmer, chair of the report.

The report also focuses on inequalities within both the UK itself and mental health services.


"Mental health problems disproportionately affect people living in poverty, those who are unemployed and who already face discrimination," Farmer writes. "For too many, especially black, Asian and minority ethnic people, their first experience of mental health care comes when they are detained under the Mental Health Act, often with police involvement, followed by a long stay in hospital. To truly address this, we have to tackle inequalities at local and national level."

The report hopes that their strategy, along with an increased budget for mental health services, will ensure "another one million people" receive improved support. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged an extra £1 billion before 2020 to help tackle the problems and "put mental and physical healthcare on an equal footing".

Increased funding could allow an extra 600,000 people to get access to talking therapies, develop screening problems for severe conditions and put mental health teams in more, or all, A&E units.


Other recommendations from the report include improving funding for pregnant women experiencing mental illness, providing employment support, developing early care packages for those experiencing psychosis and introducing measures of staff awareness and confidence in dealing with mental health.

Farmer described the report as a "landmark". "We are saying to the NHS, to government, to industry, to local leaders and to the public that mental health must be a priority for everyone," he said.

In a response, the government reiterated promises made to increase budgets for mental health services, provide care to more children and expectant mothers and reduce suicides by 10 percent. "Our shared vision of a seven day mental health service means people will get the care they need, when they need it, and will help prevent mental illness in the first place," said Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP, referencing his intensely fractious effort to change how health services are provided, and health professionals compensated.