FEW outside the medical profession know the extent of mental
illness as well as teachers and the clergy: teachers, because all
life passes through their classrooms; clergy, because, with good
fortune, those who are distressed are often drawn to churches. The
emphasis on mental health in the Chief Medical Officer's annual
report on Tuesday is obviously welcome, but the statistics it
contains are depressing, and the Government's response familiar.
Norman Lamb, Minister in the Department of Health, said: "I want to
build a fairer society where mental health is treated with the same
importance as physical health." A year ago, in July 2013, he said:
"We have never before placed such an emphasis on mental-health
services, and I am determined to continue to drive progress towards
better care for those with mental-health problems." In a Commons
debate in 2012, he said: "The Government's mandate makes it
absolutely clear that there must be parity between mental and
physical health services." In the mean time, the Chief Medical
Officer (CMO), Dame Sally Davies, reports that funding for mental
health appears to be dwindling. A key part of her report is the
need to shorten waiting times. After an inquest last month, a
retired cleric, the Revd Alan Golton, said that underfunded
services had contributed to the suicide of his daughter Rowena. She
was referred for urgent treatment three times, but was told that
the waiting list for cognitive behavioural therapy (one of the
cheapest and most readily available therapies) was up to five
months long in Manchester. The cost of the inquest would, of
course, have paid for Rowena's treatment. The CMO's report quotes a
2006 study that calculates the cost of a working person's suicide
to be £1.6 million.
Presumably in an attempt to get the Treasury's notice, Dame
Sally concentrates in her report on the financial savings of
getting people back to work quickly: mental illness costs the UK
between £70 and £100 billion each year in lost earnings, benefits,
and medical bills. The Government might believe (although it says
nothing of the sort in public) that early intervention would simply
mean more intervention, since a greater proportion of people would
be treated who might "sort themselves out" unhelped. This makes no
sense pastorally or economically. The CMO's report suggests that,
by responding to a young person's first psychotic episode, the
state might save £15 for every £1 spent over the course of the next
ten years, not counting that person's lost earnings. There is no
question here of singling out only the economically valuable for
treatment; merely an indication that properly managed mental-health
services could, over time, pay for themselves. In Christ's parable,
the Good Samaritan paid for the victim's recovery. Had the problem
been one of mental health, he might have ended up making a
profit.