Patients In Mental Crisis Not Getting Help Promised

Tens of thousands of people going through a severe mental health crisis are being deprived of the NHS treatment and support that was promised by the government, parliament’s spending watchdog disclosed today.

The National Audit Office said many people with psychosis, severe depression or anxiety could avoid the stress and stigma of being admitted to a psychiatric ward if they were provided with appropriate care at home. The government promised in 2002 to set up 335 crisis resolution home treatment (CRHT) teams across England to assess everyone in the early stages of an acute psychiatric illness.

The NAO found the NHS spent £183m on providing the service in 2006-07, but it failed to reach half the 84,700 people who ended up in a psychiatric ward.

Although the NHS succeeded in setting up 335 CRHT teams, almost a third had no consultant psychiatrist and more than half did not include approved social workers, as the government required.

Edward Leigh, the Tory chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said: “Services are nowhere near achieving their full potential. CRHT teams are only seeing half the people they should be. How can they provide a full and effective service for patients when there is so little input from specialist care professionals?”

The NAO said mental illness cost Britain £47bn a year in lost output, benefit payments and other costs. In 2006-07 the NHS spent £8.4bn on mental health services – the highest outlay on any area.

Ministers had acknowledged that the NHS could save money as well as treating people more effectively if patients going through a mental health crisis could be treated initially at home, restricting admission to hospital to those who really needed it. They set a target of providing crisis interventions for 100,000 people a year by 2005. But in the 12 months to March the service helped fewer than 76,000 people.

Across England the CRHT teams were 10% below strength. The least well-resourced region was the north-west, where staffing was 25% lower than in the south-central region, which spent the most on the service.

In a separate report, the Healthcare Commission said people from black and minority ethnic groups were three times more likely than white patients to be admitted to psychiatric wards. Its census of more than 31,000 mental health inpatients also found 68% were accommodated on mixed-sex wards.

Lord Patel of Bradford, chairman of the Mental Health Act Commission, said: “I am deeply concerned about the continued high levels of admission and detention suffered by some black groups.” The problem was especially pronounced among young men in second and third generation black British families. “There are some very serious questions that need answering about the way these people are being treated,” he added.