Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health

The Department of Health has published a guide to help local areas get ready for payment by results in mental health.

The Department of Health has published its sixth annual report presenting the results of the finance mapping exercise. It provides details of the level of investment in adult mental health services in England for 2007/08 and compares it with the reported results in the five previous years.

The King's Fund has published a follow-up report which reveals that some PCTs appear to spend much more than others on particular diseases, even after differences in the health needs of local populations and other factors have been taken into account. The proportion spent on mental health ranges from 8.7 per cent to 25 per cent of PCTs’ budgets.

While caution may be required about the accuracy of the data, the variations have remained relatively unchanged since 2004/5.

A new report from the King's Fund reveals that mental illness in England cost £50 billion in 2007. Almost half was spent on direct NHS and social care services to support people with mental disorders. The rest is the estimated cost to the economy of earnings lost because of the thousands of people unable to work due to their mental illness.

In this survey of UK doctors working in psychiatric services, just over half (52%) the respondents said there had been a decrease in the overall funding for mental health services.

The survey indicates that the area most affected in the past year has been in-patient care, and that funding for day services, continuing care, and community mental health teams have also seen decreases. Secure and high dependency care and ‘access and crisis’ services were most likely to have seen increases in funding.