Why is the NHS 'biased' towards mental health patients?

Paul Burstow: NHS is ‘biased’ against treating mental health

The NHS is “biased” against treating patients with depression and other mental health problems, wasting billions of pounds a year as their conditions grow worse, a former minister is warning.

 

By , Political Correspondent

6:00AM GMT 14 Mar 2013

Paul Burstow said families were paying the price as government figures showed spending on mental health services fell by 1 per cent last year.

Patients are suffering a “postcode lottery” in services across the country, with some areas spending three times more than others on therapies and treatment, he said.

The Lib Dem MP, who was the Care Minister until September’s reshuffle, is to lead a new Commission on mental health, backed by the think-tank CentreForum, which is launched today.

Writing for telegraph.co.uk, Mr Burstow said: “The NHS default remains stubbornly biased towards physical health – a terrible false economy at the expense of people’s lives, as well as the public purse.

“As a society, we’ve made huge progress in the way we view people with mental illness. But despite this, the NHS is still failing to recognise and respond to mental health with the same urgency accorded to physical health.”

This “simply shunts costs and crises onto families,” and results in more expensive hospital treatment as problems deteriorate, he said.

Mental ill health costs the economy in England £105 billion a year, according to experts. Mr Burstow argued that this bill could be dramatically reduced if patients received support earlier, as more than half of lifelong mental illnesses can be detected in adolescence.

The MP, who was formerly responsible for mental health strategy at the Department of Health, obtained government figures disclosing the best and worst areas for spending on mental health services.

In 2011-12, spending ranged from £315 per person in Herefordshire to just £97.91 per person in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The average was £166 per head.

“We will not deliver real improvements in people’s health and wellbeing without parity of esteem between physical and mental health,” Mr Burstow said.

“If you have two or more health conditions, you are seven times more likely to have depression. Where depression is not treated, physical recovery suffers too.

“The NHS bias towards physical health is stealing years from people’s lives, and denying them quality of life too.”

Patients with schizophrenia have a life expectancy 15 years lower than average, he said.

“Failure to invest in mental health is a false economy; it flies in the face of the evidence and, crucially, lets people down at the moment when they are most in need of help.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9927454/