NHS England loses 6,000 mental health nurses in 10 years

[Northerner]

The number of mental health nurses in England has slumped by more than a tenth over the past decade, new figures have revealed. This is despite commitments from both Theresa May and her predecessor, David Cameron, to boost resources for mental health services, which many medical professionals say are now in crisis.

The total mental health nursing workforce has decreased by 10.6% since 2009, according to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

While numbers of mental health nurses have grown in some areas, such as community care, they have fallen elsewhere. Numbers are down by a quarter (25.9%) in acute care and inpatient care – where the number of mental health nurses has fallen by more than 6,000 over the decade.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/19/mental-health-nursing-numbers-6000-fall-nhs-england

 

[mikeyB]

That’s the government’s rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Shift acute nurses out into the community, then they can say they are improving mental health care in the community, without bothering to mention where they came from.

But I’ve worked in Acute Psychiatry. There’s no way those patients were fit enough to function in the community, and needed intensive therapy to put them back on track, as the current series on the BBC about celebrities with past psychiatric illnesses vividly shows.