Mental health: Urgent action needed on services, committee urges – BBC News

An assembly committee has urged Stormont Health to give “higher priority to mental health services in Northern Ireland”.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also said funding for key services should increase.

The move followed the committee’s investigation into mental health services, which arose from a report published by the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) last year.

The Department of Health told BBC News NI that it “acknowledges the NIAO report and fully agrees that mental health services require additional funding.”

Committee members called on the department to carry out a review to determine whether it is providing enough early support to children who need it, including “timely access” to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

It has also called for an action plan to tackle “unacceptable” mental health waiting lists.

The cost of mental illness in Northern Ireland is estimated to be around £3.4 billion a year.

Most costs are associated with four main conditions: anxiety (22%), depression (20%), bipolar disorder (16%), and schizophrenia (8%).

The report found that Northern Ireland spends “significantly less” per capita on mental health than the rest of the UK.

On Thursday, the PAC published its own report and made a series of recommendations to the Department of Health and the entire Executive.

Northern Ireland mental health advocate Professor Siobhán O’Neill said Northern Ireland “spends less per capita on mental health than other regions of the UK”.

The Ulster University academic said this came despite “greater needs here because our mental health difficulties are greater as a result of the conflict”.

“We need to invest more in mental health services so that we can create a healthy population and then we can start to prosper and flourish.”

“It’s appalling to think that we have this transformation plan and that it may not be funded,” he added.

Among the 16 recommendations is that the department “establish a target and timeline during which it will increase mental health funding to reach 10-11% of the total health budget.”

It has also been asked to identify “key gaps in mental health services”, including regional disparities across Northern Ireland, and “urgently implement planned regional crisis services”.

The committee also called for greater collaboration between health and education to better address children’s mental health needs.

He said he had asked the Department of Health to roll out services for those with co-occurring mental health and substance use issues “as a matter of urgency”.

The PAC has expressed “concern” that the community and voluntary sectors often “appear to be the first port of call when funding cuts are required” but that they play a “vital role” in the provision of mental health services.

Their recommendation is that the Department of Health review how it can “provide funding security given its reliance on these sectors”.

In a statement to BBC News NI, the Department of Health said that “while progress has been made in delivering Northern Ireland’s mental health strategy, the department has been clear that additional and sustained funding is required to implement fully all actions within the strategy and bring about the necessary improvements in services.

“The department will now take the time to fully consider all 16 recommendations in the report.”