Last week we had brilliant news that Nottinghamshire is to receive an additional £2.7 million of investment into mental health services, with every penny of that funding coming to Mansfield!
This funding is part of a wider £150 million package being invested by the government over the next 2 years into improving mental health services across the country.
When it comes to Mansfield getting this funding, there couldn’t be a better place to build new capacity for treating mental health in Nottinghamshire.
It’s a deeply sad fact that Mansfield has the highest levels of mental health issues in the county, so this investment is extremely welcome and further highlights the work that we need to do to bring our services up to a level where they can meet the rising demand.
This extra funding will primarily go towards improving the capacity of crisis front line services, so we can keep mental health patients out of A&E or Police stations and treat them somewhere familiar in a more appropriate setting that’s focussed on treatment and recovery.
This is vital because we know that mental health patients who present themselves at A&E are twice as likely as other patients to spend more than 12 hours waiting to be seen… It’s also reactive, not pro-active and for many doesn’t lead to a diagnosis as well as putting added pressure on our emergency departments.
I’m pleased that this extra money will go towards solving this, providing for new specialist ‘mental health ambulances’ and more standalone facilities that are tailored towards mental health.
I welcome this approach, allowing patients to be treated quickly, in their homes, and if needed, in a dedicated facility. It’s the right way of going about this, ensuring the best treatment for mental health patients whilst also freeing up space in our emergency departments.
I have long campaigned on the issue of mental health, and in particular men’s mental health which is an issue that is sadly still overlooked, despite so many awful examples of young men in our community taking their own lives. It’s my hope that this funding makes mental health services more available for everyone but also, enables us to focus in more on issues like this, identify and address more quickly the causes for some shocking statistics when it comes to men’s mental health - from 95% of the prison population being male, to the disproportionately high rate of suicide amongst men.
Although it’s clearly not enough money to improve everything all in one go, it’s going to start the ball rolling on some improvements to how we treat mental health across Mansfield.
I’m looking forward to seeing these improvements and changes as they’re rolled out, but in the meantime it’s brilliant to see more and more investment from government into our town, where it matters.
