Mental illness ‘Costs Scotland £8bn A Year’

The social and economic cost of mental health problems in Scotland amounts to around £8.6 billion annually – equivalent to nearly the entire NHS budget this year.

A new study, which is due to be published next month, will reveal for the first time a comprehensive assessment of the burden of mental illness north of the Border. Researchers took into account not only the costs associated with care and lost working days, but also the human cost of a reduced quality of life.

The staggering figure has prompted renewed calls from experts and politicians for more resources to be targeted at services, both to improve the lives of sufferers and to prevent Scots from developing mental illness in the first place.

SNP health spokeswoman Shona Robison said: “Mental health is supposed to be one of the key clinical priorities, but it is still very much the Cinderella service.”

The study, commissioned by the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH), was carried out by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. Shona Neil, chief executive of SAMH, told MSPs on the Scottish Parliament’s health committee earlier this month that the initial findings indicated the social and economic cost of mental health problems in Scotland was around £8.6 billion during 2004-5.

Expenditure on health and social services accounted for just under 18% of the total, with other costs including those of lost work and welfare benefits. The report also calculated a monetary value for the reduced quality of life experienced by people with mental health problems to show the human costs of pain, disability and distress.

Dr Alison Blair, chair of the public affairs committee of the Scottish division of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said the results were unsurprising.

“If you look at a patient going on a journey of care with a significant illness, it has an impact on their family, it can involve police, emergency services, primary care services and secondary care services,” she said.

“I think we grossly underestimate the impact. People have a certain amount of denial about the reality of mental illness.”

Blair said that the level of investment in services was a major concern, citing the example of conditions in hospital wards for mentally ill patients.

“The conditions of acute inpatient units we feel are certainly not on a par with a physical illness acute inpatient unit,” she said.

The Mental Health Act, which came into force last year, aimed to improve care and services for people with mental illness, with the expectation that they should be helped to live as full a life as possible in the community.

But Isabella Goldie, head of Scotland for the Mental Health Foundation, questioned whether extra cash to support the new legislation was enough. She said: “Health boards have had a pot of money, but it is not recurrent, so whether it is going to be sufficient is a major concern.”

Goldie also warned that far more effort had to be invested in preventing people from developing severe mental illness in the first place.

“We are only just starting to think the cost and the burden of these illnesses is major and that we need to think about preventing people from becoming unwell in the first place,” she said.

A spokeswoman for SAMH said the latest report would be launched at the Scottish parliament in November and that they were unable to comment further on the findings until then.

The Scottish Executive is due to publish a national mental health delivery plan by the end of this year, which will set a timetable for change of Scotland’s mental health services.

Health minister Andy Kerr said: “Improving mental health services in Scotland remains a top priority for us and we are investing more resources than ever before in the NHS to do this.”