There has been a comparitively small but significant increase in the number of people coming into contact with “secondary” mental health services in England, official figures show.
Statistics from NHS England reveal that the number of people engaging with secondary services – indicating a potentially more serious or complex need – rose from 2,726,700 in 2018-19 to 2,878,600.
The figures also reveal a stark disparity in the likelihood of an individual needing secondary mental health care coming from a deprived area.
Black people were also significantly more likely to come into contact with secondary mental health services than white people, the figures show.
NHS England’s Mental Health Bulletin: 2019-20 Annual Report shows that show that the number of children from the most deprived areas were more than twice as likely to be in contact with mental health secondary care support than those from the least deprived areas.
Altogether, 12,000 people in England were subject to at least one restrictive intervention – meaning physical restraint, chemical restraint, mechanical restraint seclusion and segregation – in 2019/20.
The proportion of the overall population who were in a mental health setting and underwent at least one restrictive intervention varied by ethnicity.
The figures reveal that 70.5 black or black British people per 100,000 of the population were in a mental health setting and underwent at least one restrictive intervention compared to 18.7 white people per 100,000 of the population.
The total number of white people who were subject to restrictive intervention stood at 8,400 compared to 1,300 black or black British people.
The report also includes information on the number of adult mental health care clusters assigned by end of year, the number of ‘in-year bed days’, admissions, discharges and average daily occupied beds and more.
The report is available here.
