With less than a month gone by since World Mental Health Day, it’s sad to report that mental health services around the country, including the Isle of Wight, are still experiencing ‘budget shortfalls’ and staff shortages.
Stretched services
An OnTheWight reader recently came to us with concerns about mental health services on the Isle of Wight.
They told OnTheWight they’d been informed that Chantry House (HQ of Community Mental Health Services) were ‘temporarily experiencing staff shortages’ for the West and Central Wight and that they were having to ‘prioritise those patients whose needs are very complex and urgent’.
This means that unless your case is considered ‘complex and urgent’, you’re going to be left wanting for support.
Refusal to provide number of cases
So OnTheWight asked the Isle of Wight NHS Trust how many ‘live’ cases Isle of Wight Mental Health Services (MHS) are dealing with and how many of those are ‘complex and urgent’.
Much to our surprise, they refused to provide us with the numbers.
Although we were simply asking for figures and not names or even geographic breakdowns, MHS haven’t given an explanation of why, just that they “did not think it appropriate to comment on”.
New staff being recruited
It took a while to get a response out of Mental Health Services, but on their behalf, a spokesperson for the IW NHS Trust told OnTheWight,
“There have been several vacancies that have occurred over the last few months and a bit of staff sickness.
“There are new members of staff commencing over the next two months which will bring the team back up to complement.”
Report on planned changes
Pressures on the Isle of Wight Mental Health Services were highlighted in OnTheWight’s report in September about the draft “Hampshire and Isle of Wight Sustainability and Transformation Plan” (STP).
Types of mental health problems
According to MIND, the mental health charity, one in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year.
The MIND Website has some great resources on it for anyone experiencing mental health problems.
A survey, carried out every seven years by the National Centre for Social Research measures the number of people who have different types of mental health problem. The surveys are carried out every seven years so another should be coming out soon.
The stats from the 2009 survey reads,
| Depression | 2.6 in 100 people |
| Anxiety | 4.7 in 100 people |
| Mixed anxiety & depression | 9.7 in 100 people |
| Phobias | 2.6 in 100 people |
| OCD | 1.3 in 100 people |
| Panic disorder | 1.2 in 100 people |
| Post traumatic stress disorder | 3.0 in 100 people |
| Eating disorders | 1.6 in 100 people |
