Mental health services in UK are in a mess. Provision has declined in recent years, as government cuts bite – the Royal College of Nursing reports that more than 1,000 beds have been lost in this area.
Waiting lists are long and lengthening: our deputy prime minister has highlighted the fact that there is no target for how soon a patient with mental health issues should be offered treatment – and his proposal of a new 18-week target seems modest. Eighteen weeks is a very long time for the anxious or depressed, let alone the suicidal or psychotic.
Teenagers in particular are badly served. The exact scale of the problem is unclear, since (shockingly) no good data on teenage mental health have been collected since 2004. But it is clear that experts in the field are worried.
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