Theresa May likes to boast at Prime Minister’s Questions that mental health spending is increasing. The problem is that this is rather difficult to see on the ground. The King’s Fund today published a report saying the gap between spending on hospitals and mental health widened further in the last year. The think tank even said that there was an increased risk to patient safety in more than a half of mental health trusts because of staffing shortages, and that ‘the government’s mission to tackle the burning injustices faced by people with mental health problems will remain out of reach if things stay the way they are’.
The King’s Fund’s analysis found that income for mental health trusts rose by less than 2.5 per cent in 2016/17, whereas it rose by over 6 per cent for acute and specialist trusts.
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