Care Costs for Mental Illness Expected to Soar

The cost of caring for people with mental illness is expected to rise from Pounds 22.5bn to Pounds 47bn by 2026, experts warned today.

A report from the influential think tank the King’s Fund said more investment was needed to help people get back to work.

It said mental illness cost Pounds 50bn in England in 2007, Pounds 22.5bn of which was spent on NHS and social care services.

Another Pounds 26.1bn represented the estimated cost to the economy of lost earnings. Thousands of people are unable to work because of mental illness.

The cost of lost earnings is projected to rise to Pounds 41bn by 2026. Taken together with the Pounds 47bn cost of NHS and social care, the total bill for England will be Pounds 88bn.

The year-long study, called Paying the Price, said the prevalence of most mental disorders, including schizophrenia, was likely to remain stable over the next 20 years.

However, the increasingly ageing population means dementia is expected to rise massively over the same period, up by almost two- thirds (61 per cent) from 582,827 to 937,636 people.

This will have a huge impact on the cost of caring for people with mental illness.

But the report’s authors point out potential savings, such as improving early detection and treatment of dementia and paying for more mentally ill people to be treated early on, thereby cutting the need for admission to hospital.

Report co-author Prof Martin Knapp said: “We found that paying for more people to be treated would create net savings as reductions in lost employment costs would outweigh treatment costs.

“With a third of adults with depression and half with anxiety disorders not in touch with services, there is significant potential to treat more people with those illnesses and make savings because of the boost to the workforce.

“The problem is that the costs of care fall largely to the health service whereas the economic benefits mostly accrue elsewhere – to employers, the taxman, the benefits system and the criminal justice system.

“The Government, the NHS, social services and employers need to extend efforts to help people with mental health needs who are of working age but not in employment to get back to work.”

The study looks at different types of mental illness, including schizophrenia, eating disorders, personality disorders and disorders affecting children.

Commenting on the predictions for how dementia will grow over the next two decades, the King’s Fund’s chief executive, Niall Dickson, said: “The fact that we are living longer is a cause for celebration but it will mean that the health and social care systems will have to cope with a dramatic increase in the number of people suffering from dementia.

“Unless there is a major breakthrough in drugs to arrest the course of this illness, there will be a great need for extra care and support, some of it quite intense.

“The projections in this report should help policy-makers and those responsible for local services plan for future demand.”

Mr Dickson added: “It is also clear that there is still a high level of unmet need and that will need to be addressed.

“But the report is reassuring in the sense that there is no evidence that, as a society, we are becoming more anxious or depressed or that many more of us are suffering from serious conditions such as schizophrenia and severe personality disorders.”

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