How many people will get help from the extra £1bn for Mental Services?
The main story in the news today is the extra £1bn a year that the NHS is to receive for Mental Health services by 2020.
A quick look at the numbers:
- UK Population: 64,100,000
- 1 in 4 people suffer from mental health issues: 16,025,000
- A quarter of those receive treatment from the NHS: 4,006,250
- The NHS spends £92bn a year on Mental Health.
- That’s a spend £22,964,118 per person.
- An additional £1bn spent will mean an additional 43,546 more people receive treatment (at the same spend per person).
- That’s a total of 4,049,796 people receiving treatment each year.
- And a total of 11,975,204 not receiving treatment each year.
This raises a few questions for me:
- Is almost £23 million pounds per person per year the right amount to be spending on treatment? Is it really cost effective?
- What about the almost twelve million people still not receiving an treatment?
- If spending £92bn enables the NHS to treat 6.25% of the population, and the additional £1bn takes that up to 6.32%, then treating the entire 25% of the population that are affected by mental health issues would cost a total of £368bn a year. Is £1bn really enough?