The UK Government’s response to the mental health impacts of Covid-19 was “slow, sporadic and reactive”, which exacerbated distress and led to longer-term harms, a report from Centre for Mental Health has said today.
The report reviews and analyses evidence about Covid’s impact on the UK’s mental health and services. It finds that the pandemic caused a “collective trauma”, from the immediate effects of isolation, bereavement and fear, to the longer-term trauma of health care workers and the psychological legacy among children and young people of disrupted education.
Covid-19 and the nation’s mental health: A review of the evidence published so far says that people with severe mental illness were profoundly affected by the pandemic. They were more likely to be hospitalised or die of Covid-19, with more than 42,000 deaths before the age of 75 among people with a severe mental illness in the first year of the pandemic alone. The report says that this disparity stems from wider inequalities among this group, such as higher levels of poor physical health, racial inequity, and widespread poverty.
Covid-19 and the nation’s mental health finds that the mental health impacts are still emerging four years on from the pandemic’s start, with mental health referrals failing to return to pre-pandemic levels. It says that the Covid-19 inquiry must examine the mental health impacts of the pandemic if it is to fully understand what happened and what we must learn for future national and international emergencies.
The report finds that mental health services had to make speedy adaptations at the onset of the pandemic, such as switching to remote service provision, managing social distancing on wards, and redeploying staff to other services. But rising levels of need have since put enormous pressure on the NHS, leading to longer waiting lists for support.
Covid-19 and the nation’s mental health says that the Government must learn from Covid-19 and include mental health in future crisis preparations to mitigate harm and protect people with mental illness from the inequities they experienced during the pandemic. And the Covid Public Inquiry must include evidence about mental health in its work to ensure that essential lessons are learned and shared widely.
Andy Bell, chief executive of Centre for Mental Health and co-author, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the nation’s mental health hard. A lack of government planning, and the absence of any strategy to mitigate harms, meant that both short-term and long-lasting mental health harms occurred that are still visible four years on. And it is truly shocking that people with a mental illness were so disproportionately affected by the virus itself, exacerbating existing health inequalities and widening the already vast life expectancy gap.
“In the wake of the Darzi review, today’s report is yet more evidence that the NHS requires system-wide change to meet rising levels of need following the pandemic.
