• Health Secretary admitted there’s a "bottleneck in parts of the country" for mental health beds
• Government revealed plans to provide mental health care in schools in England
• 40% of mental health trusts in England had seen their budgets cut in 2015-16
Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt has been involved in the BBC iPlayer documentary My Mind and Me, where he was speaking with Newsbeat and admitted there’s a "bottleneck in parts of the country" for mental health beds.
After watching a Radio 1 listener discuss the failures she was dealt when she needed urgent help after a mental health crisis, he said, "compared to the scale of what we want to do which is to be much better at being there for people going through the agony that Bex is, there's a long way to go..."
The government had revealed plans to provide mental health care in schools in England. This is part of the £300m investment proposed by the departments of health and education. They forecast that around 1 in 4 schools in England will have this provision by 2022. A most welcomed development by campaigners.
Sarah Brennan, chief executive of the charity Young Minds, said the move was "still only a start."
In 2015, the government promised more funding for child and adolescent mental health services. Extra money has also been set out for adult services in England.
Therefore, by 2020-21, an extra £1.28bn more should be spent in on mental health. However, despite £140bn being spent on health care across the UK last year - analysis by King's Fund health think tank suggested 40% of mental health trusts in England had seen their budgets cut in 2015-16.
Theresa May admitted that mental health services are “patchy”. Labour argues that, "since 2010 mental health funding has been cut and the number of mental health nurses has fallen… Remaining mental health budgets have been raided to plug holes elsewhere in the NHS."
How do you think the NHS is dealing with Mental Health?