The NHS in England has committed to better mental health care across the NHS, pledging to help more than a million extra people and investing more than a billion pounds a year by 2020/21.
It is making the move in response to the final report of an independent task force, set up by the NHS as part of its Five Year Forward View consensus on how to improve services for people of all ages.
The task force among other things gave a frank assessment of the state of current mental health care across the NHS, highlighting that one in four people will experience a mental health problem in their lifetime and the cost of mental ill health to the economy, NHS and society is £105bn a year.
The report, proposed a three-pronged approach to improving care through prevention, the expansion of mental health care such as seven day access in a crisis, and integrated physical and mental health care.
The full task force report can be downloaded here.
Source (article) : NHS UK website (https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/02/fyfv-mh/)
