On average, the UK invests approximately £115 million per year in mental health research - 85% of which is provided by three funders: the Wellcome Trust; the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR); and the Medical Research Council (MRC).
The vast majority of funding for mental health supports underpinning research. Considerably less funding goes directly to the prevention, detection and screening, or the development of treatments for mental illness For every £1 spent by the Government on mental health research, the general public gives just 0.3p. The equivalent general public donation for cancer is £2.75.
Approximately £9.75 is invested in research per person affected by mental illness – over 100 times less than the amount spent on cancer research per patient (£1,571).
Proof that the general public doesn’t take mental illness seriously?
i think it may be partly not taken seriously, but at the same time the awareness isnt there. the only thing i remember recently was that ‘time to talk’ about mi for 5 minutes, it blew up on twitter/ social media, but dont remeber it being shown on tv news.
theres this:
‘Mental health services in England will receive £1.25bn in next week’s Budget, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has confirmed.He said the cash, spent over five years, would mainly go towards helping more than 100,000 young people.’
The trouble with Clegg’s budget promise is that it needs to be matched with a radical reversal of current welfare policy. That is unlikely to happen. The perverse scenario would be extra mental health funding budgeted for by reducing the welfare budget ie lowering disability benefits. That would make for increased mental health problems and render any increased funding redundant.