17 June 2005
Mental health provision will have to be drastically changed over the next 20 years to reflect the issue's growing importance, a think-tank has claimed.
The Institute for Public Policy Research said mental health services would move from the political margins to become a central issue for policymakers, the NHS and the public by 2025.
It said that, in response, politicians would have to spend more on mental health and make sure that this was cost-effective.
The cost is likely to run into billions of pounds. In 1999, the government produced the National Service Framework for Mental Health, which some estimates claim would cost more than £3bn a year to implement by 2010/11.
The IPPR report, Mental health in the mainstream, says there should be drop-in centres for people experiencing problems and 'access workers' based in every neighbourhood in locations such as libraries.
The think-tank said that, despite improvements, mental health services 'had not kept pace with demand or improved as much as the rest of the NHS'.
Cliff Prior, chief executive of Rethink, the UK's largest severe mental illness charity, said: 'Delivering a mentally healthy society requires a step change in levels of leadership and commitment: from central government to local government, employers, schools and the voluntary sector.'
Mental health will also begin to lose its social stigma, the IPPR argued, and would no longer be dominated by the issue of protecting the public.
PFjun2005
