One in 6 adults in the UK suffers from depression or chronic anxiety disorder, making mental illness the country's biggest social problem, reports the Centre for Economic Performance in London.
“We are not talking about the ‚worried well',” the centre's report states. “We are talking about people whose lives are crippled by their distress.”
In The Depression Report: a New Deal for Depression and Anxiety Disorders, the centre's Mental Health Policy Group says the 1 million UK residents who currently depend on state benefits because of mental illness now outnumber those who receive unemployment benefits. The Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics is one of Europe's leading economic research groups.
Only 1 in 4 of those who suffer from depression or chronic anxiety is receiving any kind of treatment, the report states, and treatment generally consists of drugs prescribed by GPs.
The authors of the report state that the scale of the crisis is such that the health service can't deliver effective psychotherapy services. This means that recommendations in the clinical guidelines drawn up by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) can't be implemented. Although depression and anxiety account for one-third of all disability, only 2% of the National Health Service funds are spent on such services.
“In reality, the waiting lists are enormous and the guidelines cannot be implemented. If the same happened with cancer services, there would be an uproar,” the lead author of the report, Lord Professor Richard Layard, told CMAJ.
To solve the crisis, the report's authors are calling for 10 000 new therapists to be employed in a massive expansion of psychological therapy services. The authors say this would be cost-effective as people who receive psychotherapy for depression are less likely to relapse and can stay off state benefits for longer.
“Many patients want therapy but don't get any treatment because they don't want to take drugs. This is a huge hidden problem,” Layard says.
The report was welcomed by the leading UK mental health charities, which said the NICE guidance on depression and anxiety should be implemented in full.