Unexpected mental health deaths rise

According to results collated from a Freedom of Information (FoI) request submitted by the BBC’s Panorama programme, there has been a 50 per cent rise in the number of unexpected mental health patient deaths over the past three years.

Of the 57 mental health trusts in England which were requested to provide data, 33 responded, reporting a total of 3,160 unexpected deaths, up from 2,067 in 2012-13.

The investigation found the range of unexpected deaths to include suicide, neglect and misadventure.

The news comes as an accompanying report from the Health Foundation has suggested that funding for mental health trusts in England have had their funding cut by £150 million over the past four years.

Anita Charlesworth, economist at the Health Foundation, explained: “The NHS has not set out to cut mental health services but as they've got rising patient demand elsewhere, they've had to look for cuts to make up that budget shortfall and often it is mental health services that have borne the brunt of those."

A Department of Health spokesman countered: "This increase in the number of deaths is to be expected because the NHS is very deliberately improving the way such events are recorded and investigated following past failings.

"From April all NHS trusts will be required to publish both numbers of avoidable deaths and how they are improving care.

"We also dispute the funding figures used in this programme - just this year, mental health spending by Clinical Commissioning Groups has gone up by £342 million, which is on top of an extra £1.4 billion allocated in this Parliament."

Meanwhile, an NHS spokesperson, added: "The statistics on suicide are clear: for the last decade the suicide rate amongst people in mental health services has been falling, by more than 30 per cent since 2004, most clearly in inpatient services and more recently in community services.

"We do not believe that the figures obtained by the BBC reflects the national data most recently published, which suggests that their figures are incomplete and misleading."