Mental health surge model

Abstract

Early in the Covid pandemic, it became clear that people’s mental health would suffer. Whether through bereavement, unemployment, social isolation, not being able to access support services – or a host of other routes – an alarming picture began to emerge and attract attention. The detail of this picture has become progressively clearer. Press reports, population surveys, stories from service users and staff; evidence has emerged and accumulated. We are gaining an increasingly refined understanding of exactly how bad the pandemic has been for the nation’s mental health. Against this background – and as part of a national analytical collaboration – the Strategy Unit has produced a model to help local services plan their response. Using this model, we estimate that: There will be around 11% more new referrals to mental health services, each year for the next three years; and Associated costs amount to an extra £1 billion a year. This is around 8% of annual NHS expenditure on mental health services. Moreover, these figures are in addition to the approximately 500,000 people that were not able to access services during the first national lockdown. These headline results are shocking. They are useful for seeing the scale of coming demand and for attracting appropriate attention.