Mental health spend £196.60 per person in Wales for 2008-09

An analysis of NHS Expenditure Programme Budgets for 2008-09 suggests that 11.6 per cent of the total health budget of just over £5 billion was spent on mental health, equivalent to £196.60 per person in Wales.

When broken down, spending per head of the population per category on mental health was as follows:

General mental illness: £94.30
Elderly mental illness: £52.80
Child and adolescent mental health: £14.10
Other mental health: £35.30

Further key points for the financial year were:

• 11.4% of expenditure overall was commissioned by the specialist agency Health Commission Wales (HCW). HCW’s largest expenditure was on circulation problems where it amounted to £98.1 million or 20.4% of the Wales spend.

• Spending per head of the population ranged from £6.20 on renal problems to, as illustrated above, £196.60 on mental health.

Responding to the figures for mental health Bill Walden-Jones, Chief Executive of the Welsh mental health charity Hafal, said: “With tougher budgets in the coming year the priority must be to ensure that people with the most serious mental illness are supported.”

To download a PDF containing the full analysis please visit: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/headlines/health2010/100422/?lang=en