Two in five mentally ill people told by NHS they are not ill enough to receive care

Two in five people who have tried to access mental health support from the NHS have been told their illness wasn’t severe enough, while a third (35%) said they were denied support because their condition was considered too severe, according to a new report.

The report by the charity Rethink Mental Illness surveyed 656 people who had attempted to access mental health services in England within the last two years.

Four in five respondents said that they had experienced a deterioration in their mental health as they waited for support. Of those whose mental health deteriorated, 64% experienced a mental health crisis, 25% attempted suicide, 42%  had to seek urgent and emergency care, and 22% had contact with the police due to their distress. Meanwhile, one-third (34%) of people whose mental health had deteriorated had to take time off work, with some respondents indicating they had lost their jobs.

The charity also analysed NHS data which showed that those waiting the longest for adult community mental health care (727 days) had waited twice as long as those waiting for elective care (315 days).

More than a third said support was too brief to be effective

Only one in five people (21%) felt they had received treatment in a timely fashion. The survey adds weight, the charity said, to longstanding concerns that under-resourced mental health services are unable to provide timely care. Most respondents (58%) did not believe that they had received treatment quickly enough.

The survey also found that challenges in accessing care do not end once someone has been seen by mental health services: two-thirds (66%) of respondents said that they did not receive mental health support for a sufficient and appropriate time, while 35% said the support they received was too brief to be effective, often describing interventions that ended prematurely. A quarter of respondents highlighted a lack of follow-up care and continuity in treatment, which affected the overall effectiveness of their support.

More than one-third of respondents (35%) said that they had sought private mental health treatment.

People facing lengthy waits for support

Mark Winstanley, chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness, said: “This survey reveals the real-life consequences of a failure to ensure mental health services have enough resources to meet demand, with people losing their jobs, falling into crisis, coming into contact with the emergency services and even attempting suicide as they wait too long for treatment.

“Significant funding has been injected into the system, but the challenges of recent years have increased the need for support, and despite the incredibly hard work of staff, mental health services have deteriorated to breaking point. Six years on from our previous survey into access to treatment, it appears that while the pressures on the public’s mental health have multiplied, people continue to face lengthy waits for support, with high thresholds to qualify for treatment acting as a barrier to care.

“There cannot be a sense of fatalism and shoulder-shrugging at poor access to support and treatment for people experiencing mental illness. Nor can this be seen as simply an ‘NHS problem’ with the drivers of demand for services being multi-faceted. With sufficient political will, we can build a mental health system that provides timely and high-quality care. This will require a shift in approach, with government working across its departments to help prevent mental ill-health in the first place, alongside ensuring the NHS can treat people from the first signs of poor mental health up to crisis. We’re calling on the next government to make fixing our mental health system a priority.”