MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES ROBBED TO PAY FOR OVERSPENDS ELSEWHERE IN THE NHS.

Mental health trusts are having money diverted away from them to pay for deficits in local acute trusts. Last year mental health trusts already received a 7.1% increase in funding although the NHS as a whole got 9.1%. This year they will only get 3.6%.
Most mental health trusts only kept within budget by taking special measures, which severely affect mental health provision.

A report by The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health highlights cuts in provision of mental health services and jobs to stay within budget and further cuts from the imposition of further spending cuts.

Job cuts, recruitment freezes and non- filling of vacancies are commonplace. Other cuts include ward closures, reduced bed numbers, day hospital closures, centralisation and cuts in community services. One trust said it was cutting 116 jobs in 2006/7.
Another said that there were no funds available for new services and that all service change had to be self-financing.

The report explicitly states that reduction in budgets is to address Primary Care Trust overspends. ‘Payment By Results’, a new way of paying hospitals that is expanding throughout the NHS, is blamed for this. It replaces block budgets with payments according to the volume and type of work done, using a national tariff. It is designed to make it easier to privatise services.

Trusts expressed concerns about the lack of understanding of mental health by Primary Care Trusts and a lack of commitment to mental health among commissioners of services. Mental health services are not included in the measurement of PCT services.

It is already hard to get access to mental health services. Cuts just make this situation even worse. Mental health services were the Cinderellas of the NHS before this. Many people with mental health problems are unable to advocate for themselves. For those of us who can, it is a constant struggle to get the treatment we need. Many GPs do not understand mental health conditions. It is increasingly hard to get referred to a psychiatrist or to see a psychologist or community psychiatric nurse. There are long waits for appointments and you have to be proactive to get appointments and emergency treatment. The number of mental health emergency beds is minute. Mental health services for children are worse than those for adults. In Birmingham the psychiatric ward at the only Children’s Hospital is being closed.

We need properly funded mental health services on the NHS. It should not be a question of taking money away from mental health to pay off budget overspends elsewhere in the NHS. A full range of services and therapies should be available to everyone with mental health conditions, including ‘talking-therapies’ and services which take account of gender, culture and ethnicity, which are more expensive to run.
When medication is the preferred option we need to be able to choose what is best for us and not be given what is cheapest. In the case of some conditions, like Alzheimers, drug treatment is refused on the grounds of cost.

The pressures of living in this society and the decrepit state of capitalism mean that one in five people will suffer from a mental health illness in their lives. Other people with mental health conditions are disadvantaged by a system that won’t pay for their treatment or provide access to services. We need fully funded health care available to all.