It makes sense to invest in mental health

Most people agree that the NHS is in crisis. Lines of ambulances outside A&E, and delays in accessing GP appointments have been all over the press for months; but there is a hidden crisis.

Enormous numbers simply cannot access NHS services, their struggles are invisible because their condition cannot be seen.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 introduced ‘parity of esteem’. This means that mental health must have equal priority to physical health. There have been exciting examples of investment in mental health – in particular, the recent announcement of critical children’s beds in Dorset – but the incidence of child suicide point to the real crisis.

In 2021 there were 221 deaths by suicide in children aged 10 to 18, up 30% from 2020. For comparison, the annual loss of children to cancer is around 250.

Children don’t wait months or years for medication to treat lifethreatening physical conditions or get told to come back when their disease has spread further – but we do with young people presenting with deep mental distress.

NHS funding is complex, the competition for funding is extreme, and I don’t pretend to have the answers. We have an ageing, growing and less active population and we are asking the NHS to do things that could not have been imagined by Beveridge and Bevan.

We have to think differently, as the first Director General of the World Health Organisation – Dr Brock Chisholm said: ‘without mental health there can be no true physical health.’ That remains true today.

We must all take care of our mental health to reduce the need for medical support but when we do need them it is cruel to expect people – especially young people

– to become paralysed, lose their education or employment and potentially lose their life because we don’t have the promised parity in mental health. The Government is telling the truth when it states we spend more annually on the NHS, but it is misleading because that figure is not keeping up with the size or demographics of the population - compared to other nations like