Government must grasp the enormity of our mental health crisis
4 min read
The government risks overseeing a further damaging decline in the nation’s mental health and leaving behind a generation if it does not fully grasp and act immediately on the enormity of our mental health crisis.
It could also undermine its ability to deliver on its health and growth missions.
Right now, there are over two million people on mental health waiting lists in England. The numbers of young people experiencing a mental health problem has risen from one in nine in 2017 to one in five in 2023. And life expectancy for people with serious mental illnesses is some 15-20 years shorter than those without.
These are just some of the sobering statistics compiled in Mind’s first ever state-of-the-nation report into mental health. The Big Mental Health Report confirms that we’re doing worse on mental health by nearly every measure across England and Wales.
As a sector we recognise the government has taken some positive steps on mental health.
The new Mental Health Bill has the potential to be transformative and usher in a far more progressive system for the 50,000 people sectioned each year. The forthcoming 10-year Health Plan is an opportunity to address so many aspects of the current crisis, including making sure mental health services get the funding they so desperately need.
But I worry the size of the problem we’re facing is not yet fully understood and that the scale of ambition needed to meet that challenge is not yet there.
As well as the soaring waiting lists, we’re seeing dangerous levels of bed occupancy, growing stigma and huge costs to the government and economy because of the mental health crisis – estimated at £300bn.
Mind’s new report also examines the drivers of the current mental health crisis – lack of funding for services, financial insecurity and the cost-of-living crisis, racism and discrimination and the after-effects of the pandemic are all part of the mix. This shouldn’t come as a surprise – we’ve known the causes of mental illness now for many years.
Living with a mental health problem often cuts across many areas of a person’s life. From healthcare and education through to housing and personal finances. It isn’t only, and it cannot just be, the NHS and mental health services that protects and supports us when our mental health suffers.
That’s why we need a cross-governmental plan for mental health that puts social factors like poverty at its heart, which we know is so toxic to mental health. Without it we cannot truly make the shift from disease to prevention, a shift that we know this government wants to achieve and was re-affirmed by Lord Darzi in his recent review of the NHS.
I’ve seen many positive changes in my more than 30 plus years in the mental health sector. I’ve seen improvements, especially in the way people can talk openly about their mental health in a way that was unimaginable when I started out. But we’re beginning to see the some of that progress start to get rolled back.
There are solutions and there is hope. Mind has led the way for many of the positive changes we’ve seen. Our network of over 100 local Minds delivers services ranging from peer support, housing advice through to crisis support. Our 180 shops are not just retailers but act as community mental health hubs for the 3000 volunteers, many of whom live with their own mental health challenges. And our information, legal and welfare lines are sources of crucial information and help.
We have the answers on how to fix things, but we need the government to lean into mental health in a way it has yet to do. It has to show that it truly understands the enormity of the challenge and meet that with ambition, financial muscle and a truly cross-cutting approach. We are here to work side by side with them to deliver the transformation that our nation’s mental health so desperately needs.
Dr Sarah Hughes, Chief Executive of Mind
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